The Albatross
by ComsatAngel
Summary: The real story about the Martian's undeclared war against Earth! Captain Scarlet through a lens darkly.
1. Chapter 1

THE ALBATROSS

PART ONE

"I HAVE SEEN …"

1) Inceptions

ICE07

INDIAN OCEAN GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

On a clear night with enhanced-vision aids, an antediluvian monster could be seen either occluding the stars or as a glinting speck. To those with enough magnification it appeared black, ugly and massive; even at a remote orbital distance it seemed to possess an aura of Juggernaut size and power. Those two factors were linked, of course. Under the De La Salle Treaty, no heavier-than-air vehicle could use nuclear fission as a motive power source. Fusion power became the answer, then; when constructed many years ago even the smallest such fusion power plant had been huge and an equally huge vehicle necessary to carry it. Fifteen thousand tonnes dead-weight. When first launched a plethora of jokes came into existence about it falling out of the orbit. Vehicle ICE 07, property of the Federated Concordat, Executive Assembly, UNION branch thereof. A bane of miscellaneous protest groups ranging from hard-core ecologists to politically extreme freedom activists, through a middle ground of perturbed air-traffic controllers and nervous airline pilots. ICE01 to ICE06 had never seen the light of day for various political and fiscal reasons, so ICE07 carried their collective burden.

All such information was on record (file FCEAUo772CF725) and some of it even accessible to the public, such as the fact that aboard ICE07 there was an observation deck, from which, logically enough, staff observed.

One member of staff seemed to be observing currently; through the triple-insulated porthole he could gaze uninterruptedly to the Indian Ocean if he chose to do so. From this altitude the naked eye could only pick out major geographical features but for the moment the onlooker didn't pay any attention to the view. Matters other than the aesthetic occupied his mind. For instance: almost overnight the number of "incursions" across the Ararat demarcator had increased enormously. Clearly a major incident was in the offing, although quite what it would be remained unclear. Perhaps the Armenians were trying to gain the initiative before negotiations concluded. Or possibly the Russians were trying to trigger a FedCon intervention-cum-overreaction; did Asala sanction the Armenian action or not, perhaps a splinter faction was trying to poison relations to embarrass their elders and supplant them; or could the Turks have settled their traditional enmity between themselves and the Russians in order for both to remove a mutual problem, that being the Armenians? There were many questions with few definitive answers yet. Time would tell, as it usually did, but time was a luxury in short supply. Another matter pre-occupying the watcher was the absence of his Number Two, a drawback becoming more irksome every day. Apparently the man had stepped out of the shuttle terminal at Yaleko in Zaire forty-plus hours ago and hadn't bothered to check in since then. That meant breaking at least three important rules which staff were supposed to observe like the word of God. If the errant Number Two did condescend to call in there would be a display of verbal pyrotechnics directed from the watcher at his new arrival.

Frowning, the observer checked his personal chrono against the two-metre wall display version. There was a call due from Luxembourg Customs Control in less than twenty minutes. Because of Internal Net - a euphemism for "office spying" - he knew what the call would concern: a highly specific smuggling case. Hence, forewarned, he had armed himself with relevant information.

'Fenestre,' intoned the watcher. A scavenger microphone swivelled toward him as it picked up the keyword. 'Patch me through to September Station. Make it a secure link.'

Tinny white noise rolled around the observation deck. Gradually it resolved itself, becoming a decipherable voice: the duty officer responding to his superior's call..

'Channel open, sir. You're through.'

September Station was near Kirovakan in Armenia. A hundred assorted members of the FAA, UNION and seconded Civil Infrastructure were based there with a patently impossible brief: prevent any confrontations and maintain the peace, prior to the anticipated Ararat Convention of July. Despite tonnes of communication, surveillance, intervention and observation equipment,; despite trucks, jets, helijets and other varieties of transport; despite experience, responsibility and ability the September Station team were stretched to their absolute limit. There was a personnel shortage Downside in observer arms and it showed most typically at Kirovakan.

'Lansing? This is Weiss.'

Loud hissing from a speaker cabinet.

'Ah - yes sir, Lansing here.'

'Lansing, any more progress in resolving those incursions? I see they're up to five a day now.'

More hissing and a pregnant pause.

'No, sir.'

'No, Lansing? Why not?' Soft but very insistent. His annoyed voice.

'Perimeters are too large, sir. We need another hundred and fifty people to cope. So far we've only interdicted seventeen hostile missions, and the locals either can't or won't help us. They just don't want to have anything to do with us.' Well_, that_ was nothing new, Weiss, the observer, reflected.

'Alright, Lansing. I will arrange for a transfer from the current reserves. I'm sure we have some lurking somewhere. Ah - that'll take several days to arrange, and I cannot say how many you'll get.'

Lansing began to answer.

'Just a moment. I can also - yes, I can get September Station preferential access on Polsat. Duty Officer will sort details out presently. How's that?'

'Oh. Ah. Thank you, sir.'

'And Lansing, I expect a reduction in the number of so-called incidents. Amen.'

Sitting in her dusty cabin, Lansing sat back to think for a second or two. A dedicated Polsat channel meant rapid access to accurate information; people, personalities, psychological profiles, radar-scanned pictures, psephological data, census reports - anything and everything that FedCon knew was available via Polsat.

Aboard the Iceberg the link with September Station was broken with a minor chord cue.

'Fenestre. Ovalis.' Two keywords that switched through the electronic innards of ICE07 and alerted the Duty Officer, Tomas Bibor, posted in the Elint Room keeping an eye on three communications assistants who could guess Weiss was active because their workload had suddenly increased.

'Duty Officer here.'

'Two priority actions for you. Got a notepad ready?'

Bibor hastily located a light-pen and greenscreen as one of his technician charges keyed in the appropriate page number while he waited.

'Number One, Crash Priority. Open a dedicated channel from September Station to Polsat, a dozen conduits with one reserved for emergency access. They have an enhanced communications unit Downside that'll accept anything from D through to H channels. Tie in the details with Commander Lansing. I think she's a commander but these civilian crossover ranks are confusing.'

Bibor needed to paraphrase, unable to keep up while Weiss raced on.

'Number Two, Urgent Priority. Get a battalion together from FAA reserves. If they can't - or won't - release, then … ah, then they won't release and we'll have to request from other sources. Provisionally, if FAA wont release, go to Major General Lafarge - that's spelt L-A-F-A-R-G-E - of the French Force de Frappe, current address in the Blue Book. His turn in the duty roster. Make sure you communicate directly with Lafarge and don't accept any brush-offs. Explain our reasons for having to contact him, that it's urgent. Regardless of who agrees to help, alert FLO for transit arrangements. Also inform Kirovakan, with an estimated arrival time. Amen.'

Bibor scribbled frantically. He was aware that Weiss might well decide to ask the DO to repeat verbatim his instructions and woe betide any inaccuracies or omissions. Thank God for the greenscreen; it remembered everything inscribed into it and recalled on demand.

The three communications assistants looked up at Bibor with some mirth, amused that their superior needed to work as diligently as them. Their levity lasted only a few seconds before incoming and internal calls once again occupied their attention.

Weiss checked times again. Custom's call was late, but there seemed no point in trying to attempt anything in the delay because if he started work they were bound to interrupt. Instead he turned his attention to the empty observation deck. Normally half-a-dozen off-duty personnel would be lounging around playing chess or go, reading, talking, viewing and generally being constructively idle. Not now. Due to some problematical reason, doubtless his presence, people had decided to stay away for the duration.

A speaker cabinet pinged into life.

'Call coming through, sir. Customs Control in Luxembourg. For your attention only, putting them through.'

This call had sound and vision, high-definition both. It ought to have since it came from FedCon's beating heart, not a dusty outpost in the Trans-Caucasus.

'Hello?' asked the caller. 'Are you there?'

By accident or intent, the call had been patched through to one of the seclusion viewing screens in a carrel rather than the main wall-mounted one. Weiss tutted to himself and found the active viewer.

'Weiss speaking. What is it, Kisangani?'

A Negroid face peered out of the screen, narrow-eyed. He couldn't see Weiss although the latter could see him. It felt uncomfortable to communicate in such a way.

'Are you going to vision, Colonel Weiss, or not?'

'Not.'

Awkward, thought Kisangani. Deliberately awkward, in fact.

'Is this a secure channel, Weiss?' he riposted.

'You're talking to UNION - of course it's secure.'

'Then I'll be brief. We have a counterfeiting problem.'

'I know. Pirate poly-plastics.'

'Yes. I thought you might know already. As I said, a counterfeiting problem exists. Someone has managed to produce copies of the original material, without a manufacturing licence. Grossly inferior in quality of course but at a fraction of the original's price. The Kuwaitis are leaning very heavily on FedCon. They want us to take effective action at once.'

Weiss nodded to himself. Of course they wanted action immediately - they wanted their extremely lucrative licence protected. Sound commercial sense.

'Well, Kisangani, why should we undertake a commercial protection?'

The two of them both knew the answer: because Kuwaiti plasto-dollars brought considerable weight to bear whenever they were deployed.

'At present, Weiss, I am just making a suggestion. Which is, although Customs Control has had the message from Kuwait, let UNION carry out the investigation. If you haven't already begun to do so.'

'Why would we do any such thing?'

'Ah! Although we - that is, Customs Control - would take the credit for the operation publicly, the Kuwaitis would be indebted to you. So would we.'

Weiss pondered, for effect.

'Agreed, provisionally. Amen.'

He'd recorded the whole interview and could play it back later through the analyser to see if Kisangani was lying or not. Doubtless there was subterfuge afoot. UNION, being forewarned about the piracy problems, already had an agent on the assignment. From background knowledge on file and their agent's research, UNION deduced that the pirate poly-plastic was being manufactured Downside and not in an orbital laboratory as normal. As Kisangani said, it was inferior in quality to the "real stuff" made under licence from Kuwait. Such was always the problem with pirate poly-plastics; unless the correct ratio of catalysts to poisons in the right concentration was used (sapphire micro-wires and californium) the self-propagating filaments sheared very quickly; nor could sufficiently pure catalysts be created anywhere but in the sterile, weightless conditions to be found only in the orbital laboratories. There were several technical wrinkles to the process, but they could be worked out simply using trial and error (simple but horrifyingly expensive). No, the real problem was always the catalytic one, so why did a partially successful counterfeiter tip their hand by selling inferior copies?

His thoughts broke rank and he re-mustered them. Damn, thought Weiss, where in seven hells had Chernovsky gotten to? This is his provenance, not mine. He'll get thoroughly lasered when he returns.

Return. The word make him think of his own eventual trip Downside, which in turn made him walk back to the observation window. Below, remote and scintillating, was a vast flat panoply of white, a flocculation of clouds drawing together in an aerial maelstrom over the Indian Ocean.

There was a storm due. A big one.

Alex got into work at South Benford at ten past nine on Saturday morning. He was anxious and grouchy, having lost his parking slot to an intrusive pair of slab-cabs. Before even entering the office he knew McDuff would crack a sardonic comment about late arrival - though flexi-timers could start as late as twelve - with a patronising air. McDuff waited until his employee finished punching a start-time into his flexi-card before bothering to look up and wink ostentatiously. Alex felt a hot flush rise unbidden to his cheeks. Yes. Everybody else had already arrived, had already clocked in and were all working. Normally Alex got in first, simultaneously with the security people, in fact; it seemed important to his personal work ethic. Now he was late.

From behind his desk unit he frowned at McDuff, then Neil, then Moira. They all scowled back. Ah, thought Alex, behave yourself and be practical, busy yourself. Tea. A drink helped to start the day and kept it rolling along. But, having only just arrived, could he really sneak off to the geyser alone or need he offer to make tea for all - ten others in total? You had to observe office etiquette, after all. Better to look diligent; first, unlock all desk drawers; second, produce a pen, a pencil, an eraser, a sharpener, a ruler, ten sheets of high-quality paper, a pad of low-quality reprocessed paper, an electronic file, a set of official pseudo-rubber stamps, a stapler, staples, paperclips, a memo book, a large flat sheet of plastic and a small paper-weight hologram of Mars; thirdly, organise everything into a neat symmetrical arrangement on the desk-top; four, begin to work.

After an hour of mild inspiration he had sketched out a few ideas that seemed to offer prospects for the future. His ideas had germinated after seeing a CIPRO One file, laid out so:

CIPRO ONE

Main Brief: what organ, structure or section of Federated Concordat do you trust the least; consider any part of the Executive Assembly as liable; answer only on a dimension of two factors ("yes" or "no")

OVERALL **(1)**RANKED

FAA112

DRA09

FLO28

SMEX35

UNION671 **(2) (4)**

CI63

MJO35

SC35

NPRC45

FCS09 **(3)**

Error factor /- 0.125

Sample size 187 000

Age range 13 - 67 Years (Full breakdown in Appendix A)

(1) Responses taken within 10 seconds

(2) UNION is the smallest branch of the Executive Assembly

(3) Fiscal Co-rdination Sector 3 of respondents knew of this agency

(4) In the last triennial questionnaire, UNION also scored 67

His attention was snared by those figures about UNION. Responses such as those were nothing novel when referring to the Federated Concordat, even less so when specific reference was made to UNION. The former was mistrusted, the latter intensely so - possibly more than any other organisation in the world. As a result Public Relations were lumbered with a permanent headache: make UNION acceptable. Not a new problem, it had been a problem since the inception of FedCon back in Oslo in 2017.

Still, there were possibilities. The appendices revealed that pre-literate, pre-pubescent children (predominantly males) were least distrustful of UNION. Now, reckoned Alex, given that, it ought to be possible to build from their ingenuous attitude. Not in the short-term, though. Nor even medium term. No, what this would deliver was a frame of mind, perhaps fifteen years hence, in its target audience. Hardly a concrete result within the current quarter, which might mean a lack of interest from the higher-ups.

Alex would have begun a second draft if he hadn't suddenly realised how thirsty he was. And -

'Back with us?' asked McDuff as the Serb looked up.

'Pardon?' People were smiling. At him, probably.

'Where were you? On Mars? Colleen and Mary tried talking to you. So did I. I mean, working is one thing, but really …'

'Oh. Ah. Sorry.' He twitched the end of his moustache in embarrassment.

McDuff shook his head wryly. Petrovic could take his work to extremes and did so at times like this; a good worker when it came down to hard graft, but, well, perhaps a little over-committed. The A127 on Petrovic stated " … attempts to succeed whenever possible; appears driven by an unusual but commendable level of motivation, for a Federated Concordat déclassé employee. Classed as Positive Plus."

'You didn't even tell us why you were late.'

Alex pushed back his seat on it's castors and stood up to stretch. Looking about, he made an exaggerated gesture of surprise. Neil treated him with amused scorn.

'What are you doing, you div?'

'Aha. I notice very interesting thing,' he said, using a thick, cod-Yugoslav accent. 'Very interesting.'

Rising to the bait, people chorused "What?" at him.

'No tea! Tea, you know, stuff to drink. Essential liquids and all that. I volunteer to make tea for all.'

A noble thing to do. In order to make what Alex delighted in calling a "cuppachar" great care was needed, because there was only instant tea (brand name "Blast!"), the milk came from soya not a cow and had to be treated carefully or it temperamentally curdled, nor was their sugar completely blemish-free. Neil volunteered to help - not out of magnanimity but simply as an excuse to avoid work - and helped by opening doors from Room Nine to the geyser at the lifts of Floor Twenty Seven, whilst Alex followed carrying a heavily-laden tray.

'Why were you late, you idle skiving git?' asked Neil, characteristically rude to his friend, lolling about whilst the geyser boiled and Alex brewed.

'Why I was late. Well, because there is a demonstration at Wembley this afternoon. I got held up by thousands of screaming lunatics rampaging across Werneth Street, on their way to meet. They must have some special event planned, I think.'

'Oh yeah, right. Civil Rights demo, I think. Police should have been marshalling them. Maybe that's why they came early.'

The tea geyser gave a high-pitched whine, telling everyone that hot water was now available. The two now needed to act fast before half the staff on this floor came to see how much water they could poach.

'Nice tea, Alex, you definitely have a way with it.'

He received a chorus of thanks which mellowed his attitude slightly and allowed him to recount his delay of that morning.

'Can we have the radio on?' asked Peter, foolishly thinking that a mere cup of tea had mellowed Senior Supervisor McDuff.

'No.'

Sibilant mutterings from behind the computer consoles. The official reason for banning "active usage of electronic communications equipment capable of audio output in a public area" was that they interfered with the computers operating in the office, though unofficially it was held that FedCon just enjoyed being petty.

Alex went back to his drafting. In essence, he proposed to positively impress a target audience, primarily males, of age ten and under, because they were most receptive, via the projection of UNION as a high-tech espionage and security agency combining the more attractive aspects of military life with idealised and even romanticised intelligence organisations. By avoiding dull complications such as technicalities, legal aspects and administration; by using only entertaining, interesting and straightforward affairs taken from past cases or simply inventing adventures - all those would combine to capture an audience. If Research and Development's findings had any potential at all then perhaps further investment would follow; Alex could see possibilities for a range of toys - replica vehicles, maybe - and maybe facsimile faxsheets to propagate a cult status.

It was no simple matter to describe this in the official jargon and exposition so beloved of FedCon, requiring three hours to set down. This meant Alex missed his lunch at the appointed hour but because he felt he was doing so well he carried on until -

'Hey, Alex, you can stop for tea, you know. We don't slave-drive in England. Not any more.'

'Pete, you make the tea, okay?'

'Is it my turn?'

'Yes!' said McDuff. 'And we need more milk. Use this.' He took out a note from their tea fund safe-box.

'Have I been volunteered to get milk as well?' moaned Peter, clearly regretting raising the subject at all. 'I've got to go to the Precinct to get milk.'

'Well do it now while there's still daylight around.'

The Precinct, five minutes walk from the Civil Infrastructure block, had an evil reputation after dark. Whilst Peter disappeared for milk and tea, his fellow staff conducted a little character assassination. There was also a parallel discussion about how to correctly process a CIPRO Two file through an M13 office terminal, if the requisition was also a CIPRO Two file. Peter was the one who ought to know exactly how to process the file in question - although everyone insisted he actually knew nothing about it.

'He's a stupid tosser.' Neil's succinct and matter-of-fact judgement. 'He still thinks Red Rock and Krasny Kameniev are two different places.'

'He thinks Red Rock comes from Blackpool,' added Moira.

McDuff snorted derisorily.

'Peter would,' he said, though as a Senior Supervisor he should have theoretically chastised Neil for such slander, not condoned it. In theory, anyway.

'I bet he thinks it's run by Communists, too?'

'Boring!' interrupted Colleen. 'I've heard enough on the news.' She turned to Mary. 'That's all they ever talk about. Mars! Little boys at heart.'

'And mind, too,' added Mary.

Listening without speaking, Alex smiled to himself. She was exaggerating. He didn't dwell on the subject of the Red Planet - there wasn't any romance or glamour there.

Brian and Katrina re-entered the room. Both had left for lunch together, after whispering furtively. Alex and others exchanged glances, knowing they were philandering; Brian was married, but not to Katrina. There was a slightly embarrassed silence; nobody felt like facing the couple because that might be taken as a confrontation of sorts. McDuff broke the uneasy atmosphere by loudly pushing his chair back on its braked castors, then asking to see people's flexi-cards. The weekly check. Occasionally a discrepancy arose; then the unfortunate involved got taken aside for a few words with McDuff - or, even worse, Words with Assistant Manager Beck. Peter offended persistently, the common consensus in Room Nine being that he managed to avoid dismissal by hiding his flexi-card and doctoring its software. Sadly for Peter, in his milk-purchasing absence McDuff made a thorough search in each of his desk drawers until he found the card. When he held it aloft and waved it triumphantly there was a small chorus of cheers. Neil clapped.

Their Senior Supervisor was still absent with their flexi-cards when Peter returned clasping four cartons of "LactOpal" soya milk. A few snide grins appeared when Peter asked where the "old Scots dipstick" had gone to; when told, he visibly paled.

To ensure that his tea was of drinkable quality, Alex volunteered to help make it, so as a token of appreciation Peter surrendered a box of sandwiches to him. Alex ate them all at his desk while refining further details of his masterwork. Oddly enough, he only noticed how ravenously hungry he'd been when, putting his hand into the sandwich box, he found it empty.

'Four o'clock. Those who have homes can go to them,' announced Neil, unplugging a greenscreen and pulling on a luminous yellow bomber jacket.

'God, Neil, what is that? A see-me-in-the-dark-jacket?'

'Get stuffed, you fashionless fart. And give me a lift as well.'

Demonstrating a complete lack of responsibility Neil raced Alex to Floor Twenty Seven's lift - and won. This he instantly regretted because Assistant Manager Beck, waiting at the lift doors, turned to scowl at him. All three rode the express lift in silence, until Beck departed at ground level while the other two continued down to the basement car park.

'I think your hundred-metre hurdle was a little ill-advised.'

'Yes. Miserable old git, isn't he. Just my luck. That one's yours, isn't it?' Spoken with a touch of envy. How could Alex afford to buy, let alone run, a car like that?

Alex pointed to a pair of slab-cabs that had poached his space. He disliked the things to begin with, considering them to be little more than over-designed, enclosed motorbikes. He keyed his door code, got in and allowed Neil in. The mother-unit squawked at them until it was satisfied enough to allow Alex to start up and drive off.

'They won't park there again,' said Neil, smugly.

Alex negotiated a set of traffic bollards (manned by armed police) set in a chicane pattern, a tricky manoeuvre that needed to be carried out with care.

'What? Those slab-cabs? You can't possibly know that.'

A policeman waved them on with a light-wand.

'Oh but I can. While you were getting in, I kicked their rear lights in.'

An impressively elegant solution. Simple, too. Alex often had cause to wonder about the English, supposedly a reserved and repressed people; since being assigned here to London he'd found they were just as capable of being raucous, violent and manic as his own Serb countrymen.

Neil asked to be dropped off near the Artery roundabout; easy to do because traffic out of London had conglomerated into a vast, slow-moving caravan; Neil's parting quip - he loved to have the last word - was "see you Monday if you ever get through this."

The driver sighed in mock-pity. Three hours later his sighs were sincere. Only the thought that his annual holiday was less than a month away helped him to cope with the traffic. Just think, twelve days in sunny Thrace …

By the time Alex sat down to a hot meal it had turned half past seven. No coffee, he decided. A nice pot of gunpowder green to calm the nerves, since making a miniature ceremony of brewing-up helped to relax him. After eating he took a cup out on to the balcony and sat by the telescope, surveying London with a magisterial air. Remembering that mail was due today, he unloaded the pneumatique. Nothing much; a statement from the banking society, a water bill, a circular. What he really wanted most of all was a letter from Marya. Some hope. She definitely led in this particular dance. Oh well. Maybe he could, by way of distraction, thrash El Quatro at chess later on. Meteorology Tonight was scheduled for broadcast in ten minutes; if he listened then he ought to know whether it would be cloudy or not. He couldn't exchange gossip or chess moves if strato-cirrus intervened.

Just in case, he went to the freezer and took out a six-hundred millilitre bottle, the last of his brother's home-made Christmas present. If placed in the freezer then it merely glided over one's taste buds; if not, damage ensued. In the few minutes before "Meteorology Tonight" Alex accidentally caught the news headlines. Not the erratically parochial British news but the heavy-duty international news. According to the bland-voiced, bland-faced presenter, Stanley Station Chief Laszlo Wilson has declared total failure in their efforts to locate the Fast Fire Torch team and hopes, on this the third day, were fading fast.

Alex changed channels temporarily, until the news presenter on that channel announced the collision of two civilian airliners on the transpolar route over the Barents Sea. He turned back in petty exasperation, killing the picture and going to Text:

NEWSFLASH:

Multi-lateral treaty negotiations have been confirmed between Russia, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, Kurdistan and Iran, leading to the proposal of an "Ararat Accord"

Italy (N) has declared the formation of a new "Elint" police force prefecture to deal with the problem of endemic television piracy.

Canada: Mid-air collision of two civilian passenger airliners reported on the transpolar route over the Barents Sea. No more details available yet.

Birmingham: city reported quiet after the military were used to restore order.

Stanley Station, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica: Station Chief Laszlo Wilson has declared total failure in their efforts to locate the Fast Fire Torch team and hopes, on this the third day, were fading fast.

Kuwait City: Prince Al-Arman confirmed that he was leading a bloc bid in an attempt to subsume AmConCam; CI officials of the MJO warned that an audit would result due to attainment of a holdings trigger.

Traffic on the MC125 ring-road, out of London, was only just thinning when Neil (Ellie and Moira accompanying him), swung off onto the feeder road leading south. A soft summer evening rolled by outside; it felt comfortably warm. they had the windows all rolled down; illegal substances were being passed around and smoked. All three were en route for Alex's party. Their host-to-be was leaving for foreign parts in a matter of days and by way of a celebration had decided to throw a small party, office-friends and their friends. Such an event was new to Moira and Ellie but Neil had attended some of Alex's festivities before; he had also been to the flat on solo social occasions. There were rules.

'What's he like, Alex?' asked Ellie. 'Here, pass that around.'

Neil had the car on semi-active so he was able to smoke, talk and look around (through dilated pupils) at the same time, which he did.

'Bit of a deep one, Alex. Works like mad in the office, first-in-last-out, nothing left lying unfinished on his desk, that sort of thing.'

'Sounds like a stiffy.'

'Oh, that's just in work. Different out of it.'

The map unit bleeped, telling their car was turning left onto a feeder road. Distant lights glittered, stacked one atop the other. Expensive residential apartment blocks.

'Er, he doesn't live here does he? Does he!'

Neil abruptly needed to take over; they were travelling on a private road and the matrix wasn't in the map unit's street lexicon.

'Oh yes. He's got loads of money. Don't know where he gets it from. Not his wages.' Certainly not from his wages if they were on a parity with Neil's.

Alex had told his guests to park in Zone Four in the subterranean car park slots, but they had to settle for Zone Five.

'Oh, a few tips. Don't debate Yugoslav politics with Alex, he doesn't like it. And watch what you drink; he serves up one fifty proof vodka. Okay!'

Remote cameras eyed them as they crossed the tarmac, narrow electronic lenses focussing and re-focussing sixty times per second (all part of the Badfort Towers protection package deal).

'Jesus, he must be loaded f he lives here. This is where our director lives!' intoned Moira, sounding simultaneously affronted and impressed. Neil nodded. He knew Alex to be well off, but not why or how, and since his Serbian compatriot never vouchsafed any details the mystery remained just that - a mystery. Using the passwords meant all three could take a secure lift up to Flat 332, rather than the motile stair, which was achingly slow.

'Remember - no politics. Nor paralytics either, for that matter.'

From the secure lift to Alex's apartment meant walking down the whole length of a corridor. Music trickled out, presumably from the party; Alex had left a door open. Strictly speaking, this was forbidden under the terms of his residence contract and in fact the occupier of an adjoining flat had complained in person. Complained rashly, because Alex answered their peremptory bell-ringing, shouting coarse insults in Serbian, whilst waving a bread knife around with wild abandon. There were no more complaints.

By the time Neil and friends arrived celebrations were well under way; much drink had been drunk, consumables eaten and music played. Moira and Ellie looked politely around the apartment, noticing how expensive it must be to live in such a residence. With a balcony, too. And on the balcony …

'What's under that blanket? A budgie? asked Ellie, not really to anyone specific but more in the way of a conversation opener.

'Telescope,' called Alex, walking past, carrying a tray of canapés from the kitchen. He had a glass bottle balanced deftly on another tray, a rime of ice covering the clear glass; vodka, long chilled, taken from the freezer unit. Returning to the kitchen he stopped to explain to Ellie.

'It needs to be protected from weather. Also from humidity. No budgies.' He had picked it up in Vienna on the return leg to London, when he'd been driving back from a visit home, a sad reminder of Austrian lens-grinding excellence a century obsolete, going cheap in a junk shop.

McDuff had his off-duty head in place. Those who were present could tell by noticing his drunken and rather amiable disposition instead of his usual sober and glum demeanour. When Alex produced his bottle of potent, illegally strong alcohol, the Scotsman's eyes lit up like beacons. Of the fourteen people present only Neil, Alex and McDuff were foolish enough to actually drink the vodka. Ellie decided to ask the Serb why he elected to travel where he did. Shorn of alcoholic verbiage, Alex responded that his extended family crossed over national boundaries through paternal and maternal connections. Thus he had family ties that crossed over into Greece (distantly) and Shqiperi. Not only did he wish to visit relatives but he also had a long-standing interest in Hellenic history, being the possessor of a State Certificate in Graeco-Roman Studies. Then there was the matter of archaeological integrity.

Despite specialist care and protection, the relics of antiquity had suffered gravely from centuries of pollution, corrosion, neglect and abuse; a generation from now there would be few left; there were less now than a generation ago. So Alex had another reason for his Greek sojourn. Ellie ah'd and nodded in all the right places, eyes wide and (apparently) interested; she was curious about Alex, never having met a Serbian before.

By midnight there were only half-a-dozen people left: Alex, Neil, Moira, Ellie, McDuff and Colleen. All six were in varying stages of "lubrication". As a result they talked about various subjects with uncharacteristic candour: alcohol, drunken behaviour, drugs, invasive legislation, authoritarianism, governmental differentiation … as discussions tended to, they eventually dwelt on the political system of their host's homeland. Despite his earlier warning Neil was in the fore of the talking. Since Alex felt reflective he failed to react with any of his usual reflexive caution or brusqueness, so the discussion continued beyond the usual superficialities.

'Are you a Communist?' asked Colleen with a degree of daring.

'Hm? Why would I be a Communist?'

'Well, the Republic is supposed to be Communist, isn't it?'

Alex knocked back another thimble glass of vodka and shrugged.

'So what. There are more Christians than Communists. Always have been.'

Another person asked if he was a Christian or a Communist. He ignored them. From that gambit rose the subject of Greece. Why should a member of the FedCon wish to travel to one of those few (nominally half-a-dozen) nations outside the Concordat auspices, by choice, and do so repeatedly. That meant Alex had to explain himself again, which he found irritating. Then people wondered rhetorically why a country would deliberately opt out from FedCon and stay "ultra-Pale" despite the disadvantages such isolation entailed. McDuff and Alex both explained how difficult it was to get permission for travel beyond FedCon territory to those lands outside - such as Greece, Thailand, Mongolia or the USA; it needed a great deal of persistence allied with luck and references from favourable referees. That was from the Federated side. From those "Beyond" there was an enormous amount of suspicion, and hostility, bureaucratic stonewalling, physical abuse, clandestine spying and simple public curiosity. Nevertheless, Alex Petrovic was determined to take his leave where he wanted and because he had been persistent and applied for (and obtained) permission his wish came true.

Next morning rolled around with dreadful inevitability. The walking wounded slowly came back to life from their various sleeping places. Slumping place, in two cases. Alex had made sure that he retained his own bed. Because of this his appearance before breakfast was scruffy but not drastically so - messy hair and stubble. He donned comfortable clothes and went through the lounge to spread a little light amongst those assembled (Colleen, Ellie, McDuff and Neil) by opening the blinds and untinting the windows. A chorus of groans greeted the new day. Clearly, Friday night's little social engagement had left a few sore heads, but not for Alex, who had inherited his father's robust constitution when it came to drink.

'Time to wake yourselves up. I have a busy day planned. There are things to do, you know.'

Because they were guests and British and polite, all five helped to tidy up the evenings remnants: crushed plastic cans, wrappers, cigarette ends, peanuts, bits of paper, empty cups, glasses and bottles, ashtrays, dirty plates, dirty cutlery, a piece of cake trampled into the carpet (hurriedly removed while Alex was washing up). By the time all this had been dealt with everyone felt hungry again and prevailed upon Alex to provide tea and toast. Although he grumbled about the request their host was actually glad that they were staying a little longer; his apartment was so secure, set in a secure apartment tower in a secure area, that hardly anyone bothered to drop in and see him. He had asked Marya is she would consider getting a transfer to Britain so they would at least be in the same country as each other, but her reply had been a resounding "no!".

'This is damn good tea, Alex,' said McDuff enthusiastically. 'Tastes almost like the real thing.' The others nodded appreciatively. They might well do so: it _was_ the real thing but Alex chose not to tell them - it might embarrass those who had topped up with milk and sugar. There was real butter on the toast, too, making someone complain that their margarine tasted funny.

By lunchtime all guests were gone. Alex, feeling reflective, made himself a cup of strong, dark tea, staring into it as he carefully stirred clockwise, anti-clockwise, clockwise … After deliberating, he decided to have a shower, which invigorated him anew. It is time, he thought, to start packing for The Holiday.

The Holiday! As if for the first time he remembered the vacation and felt his heart give a great leap as he considered the prospect of meeting relatives, home and pastures new. Now, where were those suitcases?


	2. Chapter 2

2) Red Alert

RED ROCK/KRASNY KAMENIEV

STATION ADMINISTRATORS OFFICE SUITE

POST-CRISIS CONFERENCE

E-DATE EQUIVALENT JUNE 5/6

Each of the heads of division had arrived and settled down; an initial murmur towards the rear faded out as Station Administrator Bhatacharjee stood to gain attention. People shuffled, pulling their chairs around to face forward, towards the podium and its three speakers - Bhatacharjee, Prue and Griskiewicz. The first of these three stood to speak after a nudge from Prue. As Administrator the traumata of Red Rock fell upon his trimly tailored shoulders, which he expected - he didn't like, but he expected. After all, he was a scientist, an astrophysicist by profession and had been promoted to the rank of Station Administrator almost by default as one of the few people acceptable to all the factions within the establishment. Today was a day to worry about: it transcended the normal bounds of duty. Suicide, murder, sabotage and more and worse. He took a deep breath, focussing his attention upon jitters suddenly come to life in the region of his stomach, then began, by banging the less-than-impressive gavel (also known as the "gravel-gavel", it was actually only a humble geologists hammer, Mars being the distance from Earth it was and transport costs being what they were).

'This extraordinary session is now convened. For the record, we are now in the first quarter of June six, and it is eighteen-eighteen. The panel here represented consists of myself, Administrator Bhatacharjee, Deputy Administrator Prue and Comptroller Griskiewicz.'

Flat silence prevailed for several seconds. Bhatacharjee continued.

'I don't know quite what rumours have been circulating about the accidents that took place on the fourth, but we're here to inform you about them.'

Beginning when the word "accidents" was spoken, a low murmur ran round the room.

'Alright. Thirty-five people were killed in the explosions. Not three, not eight, not one hundred and fifty. Thirty five. Of those, thirty two were killed in Chamber Six, three in the plant room ante-chamber. Needless to say, those responsible for these attacks were killed by their own bombs. One of the reactors was slightly damaged and currently is operating on half-power, which is the minimum safe output. Until it gets repaired we will be running on five-sixths normal power rating. Make sure your staff note that. Five-sixths. Chamber Six, I'm afraid, is quite beyond repair. It has been permanently sealed from inside, also externally, so there is no way to get in or out that way. Again, make sure your staff are well aware of that. Now, those are the basic facts. Does anyone have a question? I'm sure at least some of you do.'

He scanned those assembled, carefully. Eventually one person stood to make a query. Emmenthal.

'Yes?' It had been a vain gamble, hoping that not mentioning details of the bombing would discourage enquiries.

'Why did they do it and who were they?'

The simplest query. Also the worst one.

'Why, I have no idea. Those responsible were Ranger Calvino and Technical Officer Price. As I said, neither survived. They left no notes or letters or ultimata.'

Left unsaid was the fact that there weren't any pieces left of the two guilty men, to determine anything about their state of mind.

'Suicide, maybe?'

'Not according to their last Taunas test results. With no note or reason apparent and knowing them as we do - er, that is, did know them - it isn't very likely.'

As Emmenthal sat down another person stood up. Bhatacharjee recognised him; Fujitake, the Japanese exo-physicist, polite but very insistent and unofficial head of the Asian faction within Red Rock.

'May I ask where these two men acquired material for their bombs?'

There was no answer yet to that question. The Administrator revealed that, as far as anyone was aware, neither man could have gained access to explosives. After all, Red Rock was a civilian complex, not a military one, and the only weapons allowed there were five handguns for the security guards.

'Could they have perhaps been seismic charges?'

'No. All audited correctly and accounted for.'

'What about a home-made weapon?'

'Not possible. Neither had access to the requisite materials, nor is there any forensic evidence of any such construction.'

Fujitake have a slight bow and sat down again, taking Bhatacharjee by surprise since he'd expected a much more persistent line of questioning.

A confused babble broke out amongst the division heads.

'Will we have to inform FedCon and the System Command?' asked an anonymous voice from the rear of the audience.

That was the question Bhatacharjee and his compatriots liked least of all, because of the answer, which was "yes". FedCon would of course press for an investigation; System Command would send out an unwanted and unliked investigator, to poke around. There would be a review of politics, policies and finances - and personnel. Every time a major, or just a moderate sized mishap occurred, there was always an investigation. One thing Bhatacharjee kept to himself; UNION would be poking it's ubiquitous tentacles into the mess, though they would have had an interest anyway; what would make them even more curious than usual was a fact known only to three people on Mars (those being Bhatacharjee, Prue and Griskiewicz) - that Price and Calvino had been seconded to the intelligence organisation's "Mars section" during their tour of duty here.

The whole dreadful, messy affair meant there would be hell to pay. The usual factors of politics, policies, personnel and purse-strings. He might possibly have to resign. That certainly wouldn't look good on a curriculum vitae, would it? although the removal of executive responsibility would be actually welcome. Still, this business seemed set to finish a promising career abruptly - and by what? More aptly, why?

As gloomy scenarios spun through his mind, the assembled division heads dispersed, mumbling and scraping chairs.

'Come on, Babu. Time for a cup of something hot and sweet,' said Prue. Griskiewicz sat glumly in his seat, arms folded forehead creased, legs stuck out straight in front of him, an archetypal picture of Slavic melancholia.

'Come on,' huffed Prue. 'I can't cheer you both up at once. I'll see you in Canteen One.'

3) The Busman

GREECE

THRACE

EKOPIAN ORACLE OF ZEUS

JULY 7

Alex flicked another apricot stone at the hollowed rock ten metres from his vantage point, hitting it squarely. The apricot stone bounced back and lay just in front of the rock, baking slowly under a fierce Hellenic sun. If he stayed still and was quiet enough for long enough then that little lizard would again emerge from its lair within the rock to collect the pit - just as it had previously all that day and yesterday and the day before. That lizard must be fond of apricots and their stones. Alex ate another apricot and waited.

Aha! There was the lizard - and also an airborne seagull, a rare sight here. Hovering carefully, beady eyes threaded tight upon the unsuspecting reptile, the gull began slowly sinking groundward without any noise.

Alex looked slyly from side to side. Gulls, any kind of gull, were protected under law; abusing them was a criminal offence and he didn't want any witnesses.

No-one near. The gull was closer, about to stoop.

With a deft overhand flick, Alex bounced his latest fruit core off the intent bird's head. It screeched balefully before winging hastily away, leaving its incipient lunch to scurry meekly beneath the overhead cover of home. The tourist remained where he was, sitting with his back against a boulder, rucksack on his knees, paper bag half-full of apricots by his right thigh. This was "his" spot and had been so for a week; conveniently located (his inn being near the oracle), it was a convenient place, picturesque, shaded and tourist-free (although there weren't many of that species to be found in Greece nowadays). A sound spot, therefore, for a mid-day rest for the tired traveller. Tired, because in the interests of posterity, Alex had walked up and down rocky hills and valleys, smelling pine and olive, feeling hot, nodding amicably to friendly locals, taking dozens and dozens of pictures. He had also illegally picked up pebbles from each site and secreted them in his rucksack; once home he would carefully label them, treat them with a surface preservative and put them on display - or give them away as souvenir presents. They had a considerable cachet, since Greece was so rarely visited by British tourists.

Home. Odd, really, thinking of Britain as home. Home, real home, where he had been born and raised, lay to the north-west of this country, near Beogradska, Belgrade to the British. Of course he would be thinking of Serbia, having just visited for several days. He probably still had a kilo of Mama's cooking deposited around his waist. She had bossed him cordially, matriarchal head of the clan - of whom several brothers and sisters were assembled - scolding his funny, foreign-accented talk, proudly telling visitors of her son "the important man", cooking huge meals, taking them all to visit Papa's plaque in the cinerarium. Returning to Britain would be a partial dislocation.

It had taken him several years to adapt to the rather insular island folk (claimed to have a national psyche similar to that of those other post-imperial islanders, the Japanese - polite, diligent and convinced of an innate superiority), but the culture clash had been lessened by stints of duty in Holland and Mexico. Well, time enough to think of home when he reached it, there were days left before that became a necessity.

'Time. Time. Time,' shrilled his wrist chrono. Set to remind him after a rest of one hour and, really, the best thing about a call like that was being able to ignore it. Perhaps he would make a move in ten minutes or so. There was an interesting looking route to the north-east that remained unexplored as yet but which held promise; if he remembered properly then Herodotus had mentioned a similar area in The History, when the remnants of Xerxes army had suffered cruelly in their retreat. And throughout his explorations he kept remembering the thought of a dinner with Mister Kazaklis. He liked the Greek innkeeper; when one of the Government Revenue Inspectorate appeared for a routine inquisition Kazaklis served him ouzo from the red-labelled bottle; two assistants had afterwards to remove their superior in a taxi, since he was incapable of moving under his own power. Typically Kazaklis - hospitable to the extreme.

Now that the sun had passed its peak it was time to bestir himself and move. There were no more apricots left, either. He hurled the last stone upwards with all his force and left before the pit came to rest.

For the tail-end of that afternoon Alex contentedly strolled beneath a broiling sun, taking alternate pictures of scenery and greenery. He had hundreds of frames in the magazine already and would stop, he decided, when the stock ran out. Greek Customs would have a delightful time if they decided to vet their visitors stock: five hundred differing shots of antiquities to wade through.

By afternoon's end the sun's heat had faded a little, sufficient to act as a reminder to any wandering tourist that their touring activities ought to cease and gastronomic ones commence. Alex knew that he would also take long enough to work up an appetite. Not that he needed reasons or excuses.

The route back to the Kazaklis taverna took him past olive groves and pine trees, arborea typical of Greece, then past a stream that fed a large pond - where there were said to be fish but where Alex and local anglers failed to catch anything, ever. A flight of jets overhead momentarily distracted his attention as he went downhill to Kavos, three tiny black deltas arrowing towards the South. Not a common sight in Greece. Perhaps, even probably, they were American.

Two peasant women walked by as he entered the village; after he gave them a cheerful "kalinicta" they stopped to stare, muttering about the stranger with a foreign accent, maybe one of those Serbian spies the Americans warned everybody about. They continued to watch his back as he walked down the street of small white houses. Unusually he had to step aside in order to avoid being run over by a car: in fact "the car" because there existed only one in the whole village, that belonging to Panos the taxi-cum-general-light-haulage driver. When Alex returned to Xanthi it would be Panos and his elderly, creaking motor carriage who would carry him. Panos sounded his horn twice as he left the village and the two peasant women waved back at him.

Alex continued, turning left to go uphill; the taverna sat almost on the brow of the hill so he had a full minutes exertion to reach it. His bag of pebbles weighed heavy as he climbed and silently he wondered why the locals endured such … uneven thoroughfares. Actually it was because the construction of an easily-ascended road with hairpin bends, mooted already by the provincial government, would cause too much chaos and inconvenience to the local villagers of Kavos. When Alex eventually reached his destination the owner and two villagers greeted him from their table; Yianni Kazaklis invited him to sit down and drink a cup or two of coffee. An offer not to be refused - the real thing, real coffee ground from real coffee beans, cost almost ten pounds per cup back in Britain. Also sitting on the table were little green stringy things set upon a small plastic plate - which were to be avoided at all costs, they were chillies and ferociously hot ones, too. On his first visit Alex had tried one out of curiosity when he saw locals nibbling away while drinking. He had regretted such a rash action almost immediately, when his mouth lit up like a glowing coal, his eyes filled, his nose ran and a bright red flush suffused his face. Then he suffered hiccups for fifteen minutes.

Now, a polite hush settled as each person sipped their American-subsided coffee. One of Mister Kazaklis' friends offered a chilli but ate it himself when Alex refused.

The Serb turned on his seat to look back over the valley below, seeing small white-rendered houses falling away in jumbled rows to the olive grove and stream bordering Kavos. Turning round made him wince when a splinter from the bench worked its way through his trousers.

'You have been taking pictures, yes?' asked Yianni, puffing at a pipe. They got by in English, Yianni being old enough to recall it from the heady days of the tourist boom, last century.

'Oh yes, lots of them.'

'Good. Culture is good.'

Alex nodded, noticing the tips of Mister Kazaklis' moustache, damp with coffee, unlike his own. They must have been drinking for a long time.

'Will you be joining us for dinner?' asked the taverna owner.

'Certainly. Allow me to get changed, perhaps a quick shower.'

'Ah,' said Yianni, in an ambiguous tone. His brother, Aristotle, nodded and smiled knowingly; they appeared to share private knowledge, or an in-joke. Yianni Kazaklis shrugged and made an apologetic face.

'Ah, Mister Petrovic, I am sorry. Again the electricity has failed us and we have no hot water.' The old solar panels atop the Kazaklis taverna were ancient relics that no longer worked and thanks to the Hellenic isolation from the FedCon dominated world, no replacements were ever installed.

Alex smiled briefly. After his day-long exertions, perspiring under a hot sun, the prospect of a cold shower was quite exhilarating. To ensure he didn't miss the evening meal he left the drinkers and their coffee, with their conversation.

Once inside the taverna his eyes were slow adjusting to such comparative gloom; it was even darker and stuffier than usual due to a lack of lighting and ventilation. Mrs. Kazaklis had put out oil lamps from an emergency hoard and their warm, buttery light made the dining room seem smaller and more intimate. One table, reserved for his use, had a red tablecloth set: cutlery, candles and glasses set upon the cloth.

Alex ate everything the Kazaklis had made for him, including hummus, tsastiki, stuffed pitta, stuffed artichoke, dolmades, baklava and coffee. Then he went outside to sit on the veranda to watch night arrive whilst talking to his hosts. Whilst Eleni sat with them then all three would drink coffee but once she had gone inside Alex and Yianni would share retsina. The older man was intensely interested in everything to do with the world outside Greek borders; he knew about current affairs in America, Burma, Korea and Mongolia, of course, but what went on out there in the "Wide World" was a matter of wonder to him. As an example, the integration of Tibet within FedCon, an event six months old, was entirely new to the Greek. So was the short (four days) border war between Katanga and Zaire; nor had he heard of Fast FireTorch. Everything old or indeed forgotten to Alex was new and interesting to Yianni. Contrariwise, what the Greek saw as parochial or old-fashioned seemed unaffected and ingenuous to Alex. By the time they were able to upend their retsina bottle in order to extract a final drop, night was fully upon them and a new moon rose over the sea, though clouds had made an appearance.

Less than sober, Alex pointed crescentwards.

'Just imagine. With a good pair of binoculars you could see the bases from here. All those people, hundreds and hundreds of them.'

Yianni looked sideways at Alex. Not having a pair of binoculars, nor being a member of a FedCon state, he had very little experience of and had never seen the lunar bases, not even the American one (the Americans didn't publicise their base very often now, since it was older and smaller than all the new FedCon bases). Consequently, the Greek could not be entirely sure that Alex was telling the truth. Still, tomorrow he would go down to the Captain to ask for a loan of his impressive Chinese binoculars, just to have a check. To Kazaklis matters such as living on the Moon or Mars or at the bottom of the ocean were all equally remote and bizarre, since each was so far beyond his experience. Rather more reflectively than either intended, both men went to bed.

ICE07

WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

JULY 8

'Coffee? asked Nils.

The Duty Officer nodded absently, holding out an empty cup with cold ersatz dregs still swilling in the bottom. He had taken over from Bibor hours before. Now, at half-past three in the morning, his endurance and attention were beginning to wane. If he continued to wilt one of the communication assistants would - strictly against orders - have to deputise for a few minutes while he went for a quick shower. That wasn't the worst part, either; knowing his shift still had over half its length to run felt worse. Additionally, being in free-fall felt entirely too much like a dream-state for him to be comfortable about remaining awake.

Time to make a routine check. Keep the attention working. First, ICE07's internal status: all green for go so far, apart from one red light indicating a fault in a computer display on the observation deck - non-critical, that one, because it had been glowing red for days. Eventually a technician would see to it.

That was the easy one. Now, External status. Downside first. As it had been for months, September Station was coping with a rash of incidents; the DMZ along the Marmara zone was quiet; a cargo ship in severe difficulties west of Ireland was being attended to by rescue vessels; McMurdo reported a successful FFT run; a minor earthquake in Japan had caused several thousand casualties, fatalities in the dozens, DRA was currently in attendance. There was a low-level pollution alert in the Brazilian rain forest around Degasvilla; two small synthetic spillages in the Red Sea, another in the making near the Andaman SMEX site; there were problems with shoal dispersal in the Bay of Biscay - no-one seemed to know why they were losing so much of the harvest; Upside, then …

Oh, God, he was falling asleep again. For a bitter second the counter-posed images of popular impressions about his job - romance, glamour, excitement, machismo - jostled with how he felt at that precise moment, tired, grimy, sweaty and becoming bored to distraction with a panorama of displays and three technicians who seemed to be annoyingly fresh and chirpy. Work for UNION and see the world, eh. UNION was the only remnant of the old United Nations, being the acronym United Nations Intelligence OrganisatioN, the joke amongst its members being that it had no unity, no intelligence and no organisation so what could you expect of it's nationals? and at this moment the Duty Officer agreed completely. He turned off the power, unclipping the helmet, and tapped Nils gently. Nils was the senior Comm technician and being wise in the ways of the world you could depend upon him not to mention when the rules became slightly deformed under stress.

'I am dead on my feet here, Nils. I've got to go and have a cold shower, try to wake up. Could you dep while I'm gone, for about ten minutes?'

Nils nodded silent assent, if not quite approval. Olukaside moved toward the exit, scratching his scalp where the helmet had been digging in.

'Perhaps that' not such a good idea, sir,' said one of the other technicians. 'I've got an action developing here.'

The Duty Officer stopped dead in his long, weightless footsteps, turned and returned, sighing. What now? What was it now?

One of the display lights had turned red and flickered: the light labelled "FIDO". FIDO, Federal Interdiction and Detection Organ, the combination filter/alarm interface that existed between Internal and External Net Monitoring. FIDO operated in every known language and most dialects of those languages, in order to detect any one from a list of proscribed words or phrases, determining their origin.

'Oh Hell. What do we have here?'

Ettienne tried to do two jobs simultaneously, dealing with Downside and trying to cope with FIDO. Olukaside leaned over to watch in silence.

'Here's the problem. Trigger words, coded ones.'

'From where? Can you get a location?'

'Not precisely, no. Could someone else take over my Downside function while I do …'

Nils silently slid over to comply. Olukaside remembered to plug in his helmet and turn it on. A sudden storm of white noise burst between his ears. Ettiene fiddled on, pressing buttons, twisting dials. Finally she got a result she felt happy with.

'Ha! There you are - Greece!'

The Duty Officer raised one eyebrow. Was that it?

'Is that it?'

'Patience, patience, just let me track this line. Aha. Right. Here, write this number down. Zero zero three one two zero one nine five by one three three three four one six five three.'

The Nigerian scribbled at top speed to take down the figures correctly. It was a map reference and needed to be processed through a locator. Right, he thought, let's see just what's going on down there in Greece.

As her superior typed the number sequence in, Ettienne realised the encrypted trigger words had been de-crypted and displayed on a screen. Oh dear, she said to herself: trouble.

1103DECRYPT TRANSCRIPTION DISPLAY

ITEMDECRYPT

PENGUINMILITARY POLICE COMPANY

FLASHLIGHTALERT STATUS

OSCARSTRAGEGIC SERVICES BATTALION

SHERMANSENIOR OFFICER IN CHARGE, MAC HELLENIC REPUBLIC

SEARCHLIGHTEMERGENCY STATUS

When the Duty Officer saw the screen he agreed with Ettienne. Trouble of an as yet undetermined nature. Minutes meandered by.

'Do we yet have a point of origin yet?' asked Olukaside. 'Who's sending?'

There was still a problem, apparently.

'Blessed Jesus, we know who's _getting_ it - look at this -' called Nils

After ingesting the numbered co-ordinates, analysing and locating them, the electronic brain had printed out a location:

217 LATAKIA STREET; RHODOS DISTRICT; ATHENS; HELLENIC REPUBLIC: CURRENT LOCATION OF AMERICAN MILITARY MISSION H.R. HEADQUARTERS

Olukaside raised his eyebrows. Interesting news, indeed, and not a little worrying. So; they knew who had _received_ the message although the sender remained anonymous. But then, if there was an emergency Downside, why weren't the Americans being tighter with their transmission security? To overlook that they would need to be severely rattled, very severely rattled.

Another message had been intercepted, decrypted and displayed:

1104DECRYPT TRANSCRIPTION DISPLAY

ITEMDECRYPT

OSCARQV

SHERMANQV

SEARCHLIGHTQV

ARCLIGHTCRISIS STATUS

PENSACOLA NO DECRYPT AVAILABLE

HANDSOFFU.L.F.A.

WILSONRESIDENT AMERICAN AMBASSADOR

HARRISTOWN213 INFANTRY REGT

COLDHARBOR52 INFANTRY REGT

'How come we got this information?'

'Ah. Possibly, if there's a flap on Downside, then because of the hurry they may be using an unshielded screen until a shielded one is available. The link to the Mission is secure, I don't see how we can change that. Whoops, there we go! Lost it. They must have got a shielded unit on line.'

The Duty Officer nodded. Thank the Lord Ettienne was on duty, he felt confounded himself, only aware that a dimly-seen danger was percolating Downside. Better find out more facts, then, hadn't he? He studied both messages carefully until able to make sense, however partial, of them.

Putting things in order: an agency was calling the American Military Mission at half past four in the morning, moreover in such a hurry that they used an unshielded line; subject matter of this precipitate call involved a Strategic Services Battalion, whatever that might be; military police were involved in the emergency at crisis or emergency status. Hub of the matter: what was a "Strategic Services Battalion" and why all the fuss about it? Such a formation sounded like a ditch-digging or bridge-building outfit, nothing to worry about. Returning to duty matters: Olukaside went to check on Ettienne and her progress, but after a long delay they still had no luck in tracing the call's origin; not an easy task, certainly, taking several hours even if unsuccessful. Cloud cover over Greece prevented any pictures from coming through. Olukaside swam across the room to a shelf of directories and carefully selected one, labelled "American Military Codes Ver 7.21". After two minutes of flipping backwards and forwards he found the relevant entry:

**"Strategic Services (Batt., Regt.)**

**Special combat engineer unit; wartime mission is to destroy strategic targets utilising Atomic Demolition Munitions for which see cross reference entry heading ACORN also Mil. Ref. Dir; basic ordnance level currently 10 x 0.15 kt, 3 x 0.5 kt, 1 x 1.5 kt devices; personnel 950; equipment 45 x MGP Transports, 5 combat bulldozers, 5 AA carriers, HMV HQ section, 5 ARV."**

_Not_ good news. Not a simple ditch-digging, bridge-building unit _at all_.

Other screens were flashing news at him. Olukaside glanced from one to another, becoming more worried with each glance. Finally he reached a decision.

'Nils, see if you'll sanction this. As Dee Oh I want to raise our rating from Standby to Ready.' If they altered ICE07's rating upward to the new level, another assistant Duty Officer and two more technicians would come on duty to help support the workload. Nils nodded in agreement, imagining three unfortunates being roused out of their bunks by a squealing alarm at five a.m. with no forewarning; he gave a verbal assent to Olukaside, who reached up to the ceiling with one lanky arm and pressed one of the condition panels positioned there.

Within minutes three extra staff arrived, tousle-headed, red-eyed, yawning and grumpy; Streicher, fat, forty and much put out; Marvin, stubbly and scratchy and scratching his hair; Le Moignan, stubbly, scratching his chin and being snappy. All three stood around muttering until the Duty Officer rounded on them angrily and chased each off to a console telling them to move like the wind.

Ettienne piped through a fuzzy conversation being overheard by PolSat, the electronic eavesdropper, shown on an overhead display.

' … hello … hello … hello … foxhound two do you read do you read … foxhound two foxhound two … for the love of Christ respond … respond if you can …'

Not a hunt; down there a source was going frantic trying to raise "foxhound two", whoever or whatever that might be. Nils told Streicher to operate around a clutch of frequencies but the first to lock on, refine and resolve the scuttering airwaves was Ettienne. She stuck up a hand to show success.

'Ha! Got it. Triangulation, I've located the point of origin for the transmission on display. Putting in co-ords now.'

They were all working flat out now, trying to locate the units involved on the ground in addition to identifying them. Olukaside knew that if matters continued apace they would have Weiss breathing down their necks for ten times more information than they had amassed. Then he'd ask them what they intended to do with it and ("Good God!") they had better give the right answer. The Duty Officer started to write information down on his greenscreen, mistyped and began again, putting down times and events in chronological order. By this time his team of staff had been tracking the errant American unit through the circuitous method of eavesdropping on other units encountering it. The information derived from this was all very negative, consisting of fragmentary panic calls, coded passwords compromised by being broadcast _en claire_ , confused interjections from higher authority.

Despite their efforts, the Americans weren't stopping the renegades.

'They've crossed the Maritsa.'

'Given their current route, that will take them towards the Turkish border, to Enez. Possibly they intend to cross the border.'

Turkey! Olukaside's stomach did a back-flip in fright; an American (America, a nation state notable for its hostility towards the Federated Concordat and its constituent units) unit from Greece (the Hellenic Republic, stalwart client state of America since the Greek withdrawal from the FedCon and traditionally hostile to Turkey), running wild on Turkish (Turkey, member of the FedCon for many decades, traditionally hostile to Greece) soil - possibly carrying around fourteen nuclear warheads. Not for the first time, last time or any other time, Olukaside wished a Mighty Being had taken every nuclear weapon and thrown them into space. The direction of NGC11415 would do fine. Reflexively he reached overhead and pressed a third panel in a long-short-long pattern, sending red lights on all through ICE07, simultaneously sending out other signals to FedCon units across the world via satellite and almost incidentally rousing Weiss from his slumbers. To do this you had to be very, very certain. Having just managed to transcribe all the details so far onto his greenscreen, the Duty Officer passed it to Streicher with instructions to transmit the information Downside immediately. When this data had been received and re-routed through PolSat it would bring FedCon personnel up to date. Now, he ought to check progress; would the demented American engineers try to fight their way across the heavily defended and fortified Turkish frontier, or would they stop before then?

He had to inform the Turkish government that a regimental-sized firefight was rolling its way towards them at fifty kilometres an hour, with its core an apparently unstoppable rogue battalion mounting weapons that split atoms. He couldn't remember how to get in touch from memory alone so it was time to check the Main Index Headings; quickly, too.

A familiar voice whispered out of a speaker before he could get anywhere. Weiss.

'Duty Officer? Just what the hell is going on? Why are we on Emergency standing?'

Olukaside explained.

'I see. Do the Turks know about this?'

'You interrupted my call, sir.'

'You mean no, don't you. Well get on with it then you moron - and be fast about it too!'

Amid an escalating cacophony, the Duty team discerned a change in the American engineers movements, from south-east to south-west, taking them away from the Turkish border and towards the Greek coastline. Olukaside had a sudden, stomach-dropping, acidly unpleasant thought: were the Special Service Battalion's vehicles amphibious; that is, could they "swim" past the Turkish border on the coast and come ashore further inland, away from any interference?

'Streicher, find out if those engineer's transports can swim.'

'They can.' For once, Streicher sounded almost apologetic.

'They can? Excrement! How do you know?'

'I know. BMGP-25 twenty tonners. They can swim.'

'O Lord! They can come ashore anywhere once they reach the sea, in other words. Just fine. What next!' Olukaside thumped a fist into a palm.

There was slight consolation, added Streicher, as the engineers headed for shore: their vehicles would be much slower in water than they were on land, slower and clumsier, easy targets for an air strike. And providentially the Turks had woken up on receipt of the information from ICE07. They were readying their 127th Strike Wing, arming the aircraft that made up this formation, arming and fuelling them Frantic activity ensued on their airfield as technicians ran hither and yon with tubing and instruments, missile racks and coolant flasks.

But how long would it take them? Would the Turkish planes attack whilst their targets remained within Greek coastal waters? Olukaside thought this an absolute certainty (he was correct; it was later discovered that engagement instructions for the Turkish pilots had been altered, ordering them to stop the nuclear-armed engineers by any and all means possible - up to and including suicide attacks by diving aircraft).

Aboard ICE07 a sweating technician plotted the track of the intercepting aircraft and their targets; less than six minutes until they met. Greek military airfields near the Turkish border were beginning to stir, warming up aircraft, too. A flight of FAA jets had been alerted in the Marmara DMZ but they would take thirty minutes to reach the danger zone, when time was at a premium.

Suddenly, like an inverted thunderclap, there was silence in the Duty Room, startling in that claustrophobic den, a hush that seemed to leap from lip to lip as The Event occurred. Banks of red lights began flashing and for good measure a klaxon began hooting. By conditioned reflex adrenaline levels began to rocket. A babble of alarmed voices broke out simultaneously.

'Holy Jesus! Look at that!'

'Jesus Mary and Joseph! Oh My God!'

'Christ sir -' Olukaside in passing noticed that Nils always used the word "sir" when really there was no need for it at all ' - Red One! - we've got a bloody nuclear explosion here, sir, a Red One.'

'Help! There's a trace here …'

' … estimated five-hundred kay yield, ground zero at exact sea level …'

Olukaside picked - grabbed would be a better word - the Panic Phone from it's patented secure German cradle.

'Ave! Mayday! Colonel Weiss, we have a Red One here as of NOW!'

' … no trace or track of them, presumed destroyed …'

'Olukaside? What the hell, man, have - do you have the Tactical Control Officer in post?'

' … footprint analysis to follow. The one-two-seven Ess Wing report …'

'Yes, sir. We're moving to the Eastern Med plot. Uh, track those planes, Nils and get our own to patrol the border airspace. Yes, sir - will you convene a Tee Aye See immediately -'

'Can I have a timecheck?' asked a technie, avoiding thinking.

'Olukaside, forget the Committee, there isn't time. Carry on.'

' … Hello? Is that Marmara local? Yeah, so are we. Weiss is passing chocolate milkshake. Yes, we can definitely confirm a Red One …'

'Yes, sir, carrying on. Nils, will you track those godforsaken planes!'

As Concordat personnel everywhere knew by heart, by rote, by thorough training, "RedOne" denoted a nuclear warhead detonation, an event thankfully unknown to the world at large since the Last War. Aboard ICE07 the frantic duty team breathed a collective sigh of relief; to their profound gratitude the Turkish planes reversed course. Had they not, a Clamp might have been necessary. Presumably the detonation of a Red One had also removed the rogue engineers from the scene. Bulletproof or bullet-disregarding though they appeared to be they certainly couldn't resist the curdled crimson fireball that PolSat pictures showed rising from the sea. The second slice of luck dished out that day came when it was realised that the explosion took place outside the territorial waters of Turkey, depriving them of a potential _casus belli_.

Olukaside sat down, realising that it was half past eleven and his shift had officially ended three and a half hours ago. He felt drained, flushed-out, mentally and physically worn, sweaty and twitchy. His scalp itched, a sure sign that it needed washing. Remembering, he half-laughed, half-snorted: glamour, excitement, action, hey? Two out of three wasn't bad but glamour over the past six hours had been in short supply.

Tap tap, went a finger on his helmet. He looked up.

Colonel Weiss.

'Action's all over, I see. You did well, Olukaside. Sign off, have a shower and a quick nap.'

'I need it sir. A rest, I mean.'

'Sorry, you're not going to get much. The FedCon Extraordinary Caucus is convening. As Dee Oh you'll need to put in a full report, verbally and in writing, so you only get six hours off.'

The wrung-out Nigerian nodded sombrely, having realised already that he would inevitably have to report on the ramifications of what had happened during his watch.

The Extraordinary Caucus, all thirteen members, sat along a table thirty metres long and, depending on one's viewpoint from in front of the table, debriefed or interrogated people. Ben Jedid, of Algeria, held the chair. The Canadians insisted on looking at the Americans and their actions in a positive light. Opposing them were the Irish, who were as anti-pathetic as possible to be, detecting vile conspiracies in every perfidious Yankee step.

The Caucus sat in Luxembourg: while convened rapidly, the crisis was still over and hours gone by already; the media were carrying out inquests on Red One, not helping a fragile and glacial state now extant between Turkey and Greece. Weiss had browbeaten Jedid into agreeing that a much faster response would be needed in future: that a Threat Assessment Committee would be redundant under this resolution and that at least three extra permanent posts needed to be created aboard ICE07. Who would pay - that could be left to the money-jugglers and accountants.

Weiss, imperiously perched upon the interviewees chair, now recounted the train of events that led to Red One, the first use of a nuclear weapon in hostilities since the Last War. The Caucus relished the chance for a zealous debriefing: they rarely got the opportunity to treat the head of UNION in such a way.

'As we know, events unfolded thus: the Duty Team on ICE07 were alerted by FIDO when the American engineering battalion ran amok.'

'Ah - "amok"?' asked the Senegalese representative, unfamiliar with the idiom and Weiss's heavy accent.

'Berserk. Demented. Irrational. Yes? The engineers headed south from Metaxas barracks, eight truckloads of them. The engineers appear to have shot their way through at least three road-blocks, one a joint Greek-American inter-service blockade, downing a helicopter and causing over a hundred casualties en route. Their amphibious detour into the Aegean came to an abrupt halt when they realised Turkish interceptors were due to intercept them while they were still at sea.'

'Did we alert the Turks?' asked the Canadian. A changeable attitude! Weiss thought - "we" when it seemed creditable, "you" when it was not.

Weiss nodded. The Canadian wrote in her notepad. Clearly it seemed a Good Thing that FedCon alerted the Turkish Strike Wing.

'A question, Mister Weiss. Why? Why do this awful thing?' - the Irish representative.

Nor was it a rhetorical question. McIlwain expected an answer. The head of UNION sat nonplussed for a moment before answering - deciding eventually to tell the truth instead of lies or evasion.

'They were poisoned. That little we know already.' He left the sentence hanging.

'Poisoned. I see. By whom?' That McIlwain, fond of questions.

'We don't know. Yet.'

'Can you find out?' There. Another question.

'Not very easily. There is nothing left of the engineers. Their route is now sealed by both the Greek police and the Americans, the barracks are under a quarantine order, all surviving personnel are in a military hospital under heavy guard. We do have a sample of the water supply for Metaxas Barracks, obtained by one of our agents while things were still very confused, but the borders are sealed so collecting the sample is going to be very difficult. Our agent is local, so he can't get out, and therefore the water sample stays in Greece.'

Mutterings amongst the Caucus. Weiss felt a nasty, apprehensive tingle in his stomach. He knew what Ben Jedid would ask before the man spoke: could they get aforesaid sample from Greece to RSFG Munich as quickly as possible? If they could analyse then it ought to be possible to check for any poisons present, identify them if dissevered. Weiss (after consulting Rossi before leaving ICE07) concluded that the contaminant was probably a combination cocktail of a brainwashing agent and one of those aggression-inducing "combat pharmaceuticals" that the Americans were so fond of. Yes, indeed, Weiss would like to see the results of that sample himself, definitely.

In orbit above, Bibor, deputising for his superior, tapped his earlink monitor. Although he didn't need to, he listened earnestly to the Caucus proceedings. They were certainly quizzing Weiss, he decided, given that they seldom had the chance to debrief UNION personnel. Now, what was -

A Caucus rep Downside had asked if a sample could be taken from Greece to Munich. Weiss replied no; their man who had taken the sample was Greek and would never be let near a border; he had achieved a minor miracle to simply get hold of the water sample. As for trying to get an agent inside, forget it. No-one from FedCon would be allowed into Greece -

Ha! That was what he had tried to remember -

'Fenestre. Atria.' A scavenger microphone swivelled to pick up his keywords, putting him through to Weiss in seconds.

The Colonel savoured the unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling of futility. He had been forced to knock down all the Caucus' suggestions about retrieving "Sample A", incidentally pointing out that there was no certainty that the sample would actually prove to be contaminated if it ever got to RSFG Munich. Now the thirteen members were talking amongst themselves, deliberately ignoring Weiss while they discussed options. Simply judging from tone of voice, none of the representatives were happy with things. The probable subject of their discussion reclined in his seat and looked around the convention room in boredom. He counted the number of lights, the number of chairs, guessed which Caucus members composed which faction -

'COLONEL WEISS' boomed a voice. Weiss jumped upright in his chair, looked around and realised that the gain on his earlink had been set at maximum volume. A member of the Caucus looked at him enquiringly. Frantically, Weiss tapped at the monitor to reduce the volume.

' … have a man in Greece already, not too far from the incident zone. Sir, are you getting this?'

'Yes!' hissed Weiss. There were more glances directed at him now, some curious, some hostile.

'Ah - excuse me, gentlefolk … I'm getting an update from our Computer Command Facility … yes … yes … very well. Amen.' Weiss felt slightly smug about the phrase "Computer Command Facility" - it sounded impressive, better than an overworked, brevetted major from Szeged who (luckily!) was on the ball, telling that: a FedCon agent was inside the Greek borders even as they spoke.

Babble babble, went the Caucus. They were interested. All the situation needed was for McIlwain to -

'We want that sample at RSFG within twelve hours. Can you manage that Mister Weiss? Twelve hours.'

Feeling the need to finally say "yes" to a Caucus proposal, the head of UNION nodded. Rashly. After agreeing be belatedly thought again, in terms of timing; at least an hour to notify their Greek agent, then two for him to reach the man they had sight-seeing at Ekope, then five to six hours for their CI man to attain the border, leaving only three hours for travel from Greece to Munich. If there were any hitches en route then Sample A would be late and the Caucus would descend upon him, breathing both flammable and poisonous vapours. They relished any opportunity to demonstrate their charter-bound authority over UNION. Hell, that was what had driven his predecessor to a massive nervous breakdown.

EKOPE

THRACE

NORTHERN GREECE

Alex slept fitfully. Finally, he dozed off, at around half three in the morning, only to be woken hours later when an idiot elsewhere in the taverna thoughtlessly slammed a door, hard. After a little lethargic cursing the Serb rolled over, pulling a pillow over his head and sleeping again.

The alarm brought him back to life (reluctantly) at half past ten, squinting balefully across the room at it. Hot already, and he felt sweaty and sticky before even getting out of bed After a cold shower Alex felt more like a member of the genus Homo sapiens again. Now, first order of the day for recently revived human beings was breakfast. Food and drink. He went down the wooden stairs, three at a time, but avoided running his hand along the railing, since in several places the passage of many hands had worn away the varnish and left splinters. Nobody else seemed to be around at the moment, oddly enough, since Mister Kazaklis would by now be sipping on his _n_th cup of coffee, his wife would be cleaning and tidying. Alex scanned the darkened room with underway curtains, empty wooded tables partially open door. Where were they?

A bustling Yianni Kazaklis came in from the street outside, pale and mopping his brow. Seeing Alex, he stopped. The normally relaxed and affable taverna owner looked unusually tense.

'Oh, Mister Petrovic, such bad news.'

Alex stopped in his tracks. Fear, at least a kilo of it, fell internally from his heart to a location near his colon. Non-specific fear, the kind that generated a flicker of panicked images: bad news? like what - war in Greece? death in his family? his flat burned down? the money traced?

'Ah, such bad news. Have you heard?'

Hardly possible, given that the taverna didn't have television in its rooms and guests needed to travel into the village to get a newsfax. Alex asked the Greek to explain. Kazaklis sat down at a table. He looked unwell. Had some disaster befallen Mrs Kazaklis?

'The Americans, you know. They had a bomb, a nuclear bomb, that went off last night, near Turkey. Radio Elados says it was an accident, but what do we know? There may be war. The Americans and Turkey and Greece -'

His coffee cup rattled as he shakily placed it back onto its saucer. Alex went cold and his feet tingled. Gooseflesh crept up the back of his neck. To a Yugoslav the thought of a nuclear explosion that may have been hostile brought back a host of evil memories - the Last War, when Hungary and Romania's tiny nuclear arsenals had killed millions in each country and -

Holy Mother of God. Fallout. The stuff that had killed his father.

'Mister Kazaklis, did the radio say anything about fallout - radioactivity, plutonium, anything like that. Please; it's important.'

How commensurate Mister Kazaklis felt with these terms was a moot point, since his English didn't run to technical vocabulary.

'"Fallout"? No, no, I think not. Why?'

He spoke to an empty space. Alex raced back upstairs to his room. A string of unspoken expletives ran through his mind as he dropped onto all fours alongside the bed and stretched under the blanket that hung to the floor. Where had it - ah, the handle, right, he panicked.

A small suitcase came into view as he pulled. It resembled the type of item an office executive might carry sandwiches in; Petrovic used it to keep his TACT unit in. He only ever got one of the status-symbol artefacts when going on holiday in Greece. Too expensive and exclusive to hand out freely otherwise and, besides which, he felt sure that one reason he received one was in fact to impress the locals with a FedCon device.

Dial the number, press the lock, insert and turn the key; presto, revealed, one Total Access Communications Terminal, slightly scratched, capable of communicating via Polsat and dedicated uplink modes or compatible non-agency transceivers. A marvel of compact communication with the FedCon world-wide. Having opened the case and turned on the TACT - source of feeble puns in English - he needed to remember the access code number sequence for the channel he wanted. Nine zero five six, Civilian Traffic, News Update, and listen …

There was no news about any explosion, nuclear or otherwise. None at all. That meant a cover-up, which by implication meant bad news, which meant bad times ahead for Alex. It was preposterous to imagine that there really would be no information about such an event because the one type of crisis impossible to hide from concerned citizens, dosimeters, sleepless satellites, luxometric scanners, aircraft, EMPaths and all was a nuclear explosion. Or, rather than a cover-up, knowing from experience how bumblingly inept the Higher Echelons could be, more probably they were sitting on the information until it could be given a pretty gloss.

Alex replaced the communicator glumly and sat on the bed. Holy Mother, he thought, look at my options now. I can stay indoors to avoid fallout, get outside to hunt down a few more facts, or leave Greece immediately. Hardly a richness of choice!

Long awareness of the Seven-tenths Rule from childhood lessons meant Alex chose the first option; stay indoors for at least forty-eight hours. While doing so he checked Radio Ellados for further updates; these remained infuriatingly low on hard facts but removed any lingering doubt that the affair had been hoaxed or a colossal mistake. From what the specialists said, given Alex's very poor Greek, the fallout seemed to be confined to a small coastal footprint.

The evening meal felt tense and unpleasant, merely eating as a form of absently passing the time. The host and his wife made themselves scarce after dining rapidly, leaving a solitary Alex looking around wondering what to do in the coming day, looking outward and inward and being bored with both. Then fate, fickle genius locii, intervened.

A stranger wandered into the taverna, dusty, drawn and not one of the villagers. He looked all around, curiously, as if he knew where he was but not what it was. Alex pushed a glass toward him and the stranger poured himself a glass of wine, nodding silently in appreciation. After emptying the glass with a thirsty relish, the man stood again, his clothing stiffened with sweat and dust. From wherever he had come, it had been on foot.

'Hello,' he said, in English. Unusual, or prescient.

'Hello,' said Alex in cautious tone.

'Would you know where to find Mister Petrovic?'

'Enosis. Taksim, varek grada kosec grada.'

McDuff and Beck both wore their serious expressions. McDuff seemed normal but Beck visibly emitted death-rays from his eyes. It seemed that Assistant Manager Beck disliked his staff: going for a holiday; going abroad for a holiday; going abroad for a holiday to a non-FedCon state. Although Alex had gone on vacations to Greece for years, Beck never seemed to be able to come to an accommodation or to appreciate leniency.

' - and finally, Mister Petravacci -' a little slip Beck frequently made apparently hinting that Alexander Dragan Petrovic was really Italian - 'make a mental note of this phrase: Enosis. Taksim varek grada kosek grada. If that phrase is used by a person in conversation when you are in Greece, then they need your urgent attention and aid. Is that clear? Urgent attention.' Beck detested having to inform travellers beyond the FedCon boundaries of this rubbish, James Bond nonsense, but UNION insisted he do it.

Alex knew the origin of the phrase. "Gnosis" had been the rallying cry of those who wanted a united Greek Cyprus, a dream long since turned to dust; "Task var. grad Kosei grad" was an old Albanian folk song in dialect, not a phrase that would ever crop up in conversation with nationalist tension running high. Last year the danger-passage had been a quote from Macbeth he couldn't remember.

'Enosis. Taksim varek grada kosek grada,' repeated the stranger, wiping his forehead with a hand that came away grimy with sweat and dirt.

'Oh yes?' enquired Alex politely. He got a sour look from his new friend.

'Don't play silly word games with me, mister. I need help.' He spoke in English, precise but accented. From a pocket he produced a tired-looking garlic sausage, wrapped in a ziplock plastic bag, almost as sweaty and dirty as himself.

'To get past the roadblocks,' he explained when Alex stared at the bagged sausage. 'Oh, there is practically no fallout. Those Demolition devices have to be clean. Here, take it.' The sausage was offered. 'DON'T eat it and be careful handling it, there's a thermally-sealed plastic ampoule inside the sausage with a water sample from Metaxas Barracks, ninety-nine per cent probability poisoned.'

The stranger didn't go into any of the details of the hair-raising activities undertaken to obtain that sample - bribery, threats, theft.

The Serb looked puzzled at his new drinking partner's description.

'You get the easy part, mister tourist. Get this sample to RSFG Munich within twelve hours. That's your assignment. It comes from the top levels of UNION so try not to screw my work up, okay?'

Oh, right, great, wonderful, fantastic! - what the hell was this lunatic on about? Cut short a holiday to take a second-hand, third-rate wurst to Germany - mad!

Mister Mad rose to leave, then paused and turned back, as if on a whim. He gave a smile more like a sneer.

'Oh. Try nine zero five seven, civilian traffic, special news review. They're running a coded confirmation. You might find it interesting.'

He left and Alex neither saw nor heard of him ever again. On the other hand, channel nine zero five seven did have coded confirmation of the "incident"; "Enosis taksim varek grada kosek grada" was the emergency catchphrase; there really was an ampoule hidden within the sausage. A nasty creeping hot-and-cold feeling came over him, working it's way from the toes upwards. Whoever or whatever the stranger had been, he was well-informed, aware what was going on.

And exactly _what_ was going on? A person (i.e. Alex) needed to carry an ampoule, with a sample of water therein, to Research Science Foundation Germany at Munich. He hadn't asked for it but an adventure had come to him unbidden and settled uncomfortably in his lap, although as yet Alex didn't think of events as an "adventure", more an "unpleasant sustained disturbance". He sat glumly on his bed upstairs, thinking slowly and carefully. The strange visitor with his salami might be an entrapment attempt by the Americans (or, less likely, the Greeks) but how could they suborn the Polsat and Internal Net news channels? By virtue of Occams Razor the bad news he almost disbelieved must be true. Unfortunately.

Should he leave Greece? Yes, a good idea, all things considered, and while leaving he might as well take that farcical sausage with him, too. No entrapment could be so bizarre, could it?

He checked his chrono; eleven hours until they expected him back in Munich. So kind of them to set him such a generous deadline. Greek customs protocol alone might take eleven hours if they felt awkward.

Problems!

A spark of resolve grew within him. So, the FedCon were unable to solve this little problem, were they? Two million of them in total and they chose to unload upon him and him alone. Well, he'd show them. Just out of spite, too.

In all, it took Alex suprisingly little time to reach the Graeco-Bulgarian border. His bill was settled in cash (the Kazaklis being sorry to see him go); bags were packed and Panos hailed on the intangible village grapevine within half an hour; it then took another hour to reach the border in Panos' automobile accompanied by the smell of sweat, hot leather, petrol and aftershave. The taxi driver reminded Alex of the Special Device, wished him luck and departed at high speed for home.

The Komotino customs post sat on a feeder road to the west of the town itself; used mainly to check articulated transport and ground-effect vehicles carrying cargo to and from Bulgaria, it was a small, low-key operation compared with the joint FedCon/Bulgarian one on the other side of the border. Normally the staff consisted of four men, two on duty, two off. Their job mostly consisted of examining paperwork and routinely passing it. Mostly. If they were annoyed or bored then to acquire a simple "Approved" stamp might take hour; this much Alex knew from previous visits and at all costs he needed to avoid such a delay, which was where the Special Device came in. Not that it looked especially device-like: a brown paper bag containing food and a small knife.

Here goes, he thought.

George and Ari sat idly playing cards together in their plastic waterproof Customs cabin. Although initially transparent, years of dust, wear, weather and hard usage had given it a translucent cover which rendered the outside world only semi-visible. This meant they didn't spot the stranger immediately. Also, he came on foot; this was unusual behaviour at this particular point on the border. Nor did the stranger carry on up to the border or the customs post. Rather, he sat calmly upon one of the worn stone walls leading there; from a brown paper bag he produced food and began eating slowly, unaware of how incongruous such behaviour seemed. George spotted the stranger whilst Ari remained intently scanning his cards.

'Hey. Ari. Look.'

''Shh.'

'Someone's on the wall.'

'Oh. Doing what?'

'Eating.'

'Not illegal.'

'Your deal. Ah, here he comes.'

'Right. Pick your cards up.'

'What for?'

'So I can't see them, stupid.'

Alex left his peeled onion half-eaten when he saw two officials leave their cosy cubicle and wave imperiously at him, their interest triggered by his standing up. He gave them a lazy, friendly wave back. They waved even harder. One made a "come here" gesture with forefinger that dispelled any ambiguity.

Oho, thought the Serb, Step One completed successfully. He got up slowly, picked up his hand luggage, looked approvingly and admiringly at the sky and started to walk. The first hurdle had been to make the customs people notice him instead of vice-versa.

'Hello,' he said, in a cheerful tone, in English. The two customs officers didn't so much as blink.

'Yes sir.'

'Can we help you sir.'

'I see you have luggage, sir.'

'Can we inspect your bags, sir.'

Certainly they could! Alex first casually opened the metal-edged secure case, revealing boxed slides by the dozen. The customs officers were interested, made obvious by the way they suddenly became quieter, although their double-act continued.

'Yes sir. What are these sir?'

'Slides.'

'Slides sir?'

'Yes. Here, let me show you. I can use this flat-screen viewer. Just give me a second. Right, these are - these six - are from the oracle at Ekope, one slide from each point of the compass and two from the middle. This shows the Doric columns; this one shows the detail in some of the seating - it's a good one, isn't it! I'm quite proud of that one. Ah, now this set are various statues on the road towards Xanthos. Two for each statue, one from the front and one from the rear, so you can judge the condition of each, and there's a reference one that shows the whole prospect. The quality of light is inconsistent in a few but the Department of Antiquities forbids anyone using illumination greater that two-thousand six hundred lux, and as you can see from the built-in flash mine is only rated at a thousand.'

Not a little bored by this monotone monologue, the two guards nodded and waved magnanimously, being familiar with the culture tourists who came to soak up Hellenic culture. They sorted through each case in a rapid and practiced manner, not missing anything, running a scanner over any object deemed worthy of study. What interested them most of all was the TACT unit Alex had clipped to his belt. They recognised the device but not why a tourist would be carrying one.

'Yes sir.'

'Satellite communicator sir. Not spying are you sir.'

'Oh, this thing? No, just regulations. I have to carry it at all times in a country out of or beyond the auspices of the Federated Concordat, since there aren't any reciprocation clauses and if there should be an accident or illness I would have to be air-ambulanced out to the nearest mandated medical site, providing that there wasn't -'

'Yes, yes, yes, sir,' interrupted one of the officials, which was a good thing since Alex would happily have paraphrased the entire Manual of Personnel Operations if needed.

'Do you have anything to declare, sir.'

'Um - well, no.'

'Why are you leaving the country sir.'

Alex gave a diffident shrug. Now he needed to angle for a little sympathy or mild derision, either would do.

'My landlord kicked me out. He said with all the troubles and the Americans messing about, he didn't want a foreigner under his roof. I had enough money to get a taxi but not much for food.'

Glad to be rid of this boring foreign oddity, the two customs officers stamped his docket, put "Approved" in Greek and English stamps on any spare space available on his luggage, then sped him on his way, still blustering about taxi fares, re-imbursement foreign policy and xenophobia. They exchanged glances, watched their visitor amble off over the brow of the hill towards the FedCon/Bulgarian customs house, looked at each other again and started to laugh; they swapped a few choice insults about stupid foreign tourists (a Slav, too, by the sound of it) and their stupid foreign ways.

They would have been considerably less amused if they had been able to see the passer-by, once out of sight, throw his paper bag away, retain a gnawed salami and stick it into a smart-card holding slot in his TACT unit; the rest of the luggage went into a ditch and a sly grin spread over Alex's face. Phase Two successfully completed; now for a quick sprint and Phase Three.

Bibor heard the buzzing coming from a great distance as if through a tunnel; gradually the sound grew louder and louder, like a circular saw cutting wood. Persistent and insistent.

Awake. He'd been asleep, not dreaming, just sleeping. And the buzz-saw noise was his alarm, flashing on and off whilst generating a hideous droning noise guaranteed to vibrate even the soundest sleeper awake. Shuddering and blinking once, he looked around. Shit. Still on the Iceberg. According to his alarm there was still half an hour before his duty started. Christ, it felt like a quantum jump from Senior Supervisor to Deputy; he still hadn't adjusted to it; he was still apprehensive that his tour of duty aboard ICE07 might be extended because of his promotion. Still - those three extra increments on the pay scale would be highly welcome; maybe he could repaint the gloomy grey cubby-hole that laughingly masqueraded as his cabin.

Right. Now for the four "S's". Christ, about the only decent thing about cabin B7 was the personal shower cubicle. That was how he woke up of a morning. After a few weeks you no longer noticed how stale and flat the recycled water was, nor did you dwell much on the nature, exactly, of recycled water.

Dressed in a regulation blue jump-suit, orange life-preserver, green lace-ups and utility belt, Bibor jogged easily through corridor after corridor on his "morning" constitutional, an exercise routine aided by the miniscule gravity aboard the Iceberg. An occasional member of staff would nod to him as they stood aside to let him by. An earlink monitor kept him au fait until he trotted over to the central stairwell and leapt for the ladder, using his hands and feet to slide down. A neat trick. Less neat if someone happened to be sliding up the down ladder as he was descending it, but low-g collisions weren't too painful.

'Morning all! How fares the world; Duty Officer update, please.'

A harassed-looking woman checked through a greenscreen and began to recite a list of incidents: Graeco-Turkish hostility had climbed yet another point on the Henderson scale; a submarine freighter had fouled an undersea fish retainer in the English Channel; there was a corruption scandal on the Russian bourse; Munich Research had their sample; September Station had carried out a successful interdiction; a typhoid epidemic was sweeping through the Campo in Mexico, denied by the Mexican government, confirmed by the FedCon teams on the ground there. The Duty Officer, a lanky Swede ill-designed for the cramped orbital environment of ICE07, looked peevishly at her superior, wondering how it was possible to be so vivacious and informed this early in the day.

Knowing all the methods of "enhancing" long and boring periods of duty, Bibor sniffed at an ashtray, trying to detect tobacco. He looked in the dead spaces between island-consoles and found a disposable wrapper for a sandwich. Tut tut. Food was not allowed on duty. Looking between two other consoles Bibor found a full wrapper. He could hear the technicians silently cursing their over-inquisitive overseer.

'Tut tut,' he said, holding the offending article up between thumb and forefinger. 'Naughty. Lose it.'

One of the technicians looked aggrieved. Bibor gave her a withering look. Shouldn't have got caught, should you, madam.

'Just a minute - what was that about Munich?' The Duty Officers precise suddenly came back to him. 'RSFG got their sample? That was damned quick.'

He checked the wall chrono: six hours (and seven minutes) until the deadline elapsed, Colonel Weiss would be happy indeed, because he had worried about missing the delivery time after his uncharacteristic lapse. Next time (if or when there was a next time) he'd told supervisors, there would be precisely no rash promise to deliver anything whatsoever.

'Fenestre. Atria,' he snapped, very businesslike. 'Hello sir. Good news.'

Upon receiving the news, Weiss relaxed a little in his fluid swivel-seat, gently moving it from side to side to the discomfiture of his aide. Well. Six hours was not a long time considering the personnel and resources RSFG could apply to a problem. Had he been a smoker he would have lit a cigarette; as a confirmed non-smoker he merely sucked a mint. Now, all that remained was for Munich to analyse their sample and pronounce their findings, hopefully within six hours.

'Ah, sir, how soon do we need those seven new members?' asked his visitor, Olukaside.

'Pardon? Oh, them. Yesterday. Why ask? You know we always need new inductees.'

The Nigerian nodded.

'As a suggestion, sir, why not try the courier who carried that sample to RSFG from Greece? It means only six others to look for. From what Bibor told me he seems, er, appropriate.'

Yes. Appropriate. Forging a Red Card through faintly criminal family contacts and bluffing a route across four countries, nonchalantly depositing a crumpled paper bag with half a pitta and a salami in RSFG Reception and declaring it to be their "poison polony". Such behaviour smacked of dishonesty and, Weiss thought, we could use a person like that. Still, since he hadn't been pre-selected and vetted perhaps an Eagle Three would be advisable.


	3. Chapter 3

4) Unveiled

BADFORT TOWERS

LONDON

Alex looked out over his balcony at the dull British Skies laded with rain, promising a deluge. At least the phototropic smogs were gone, a memory of autumns past. All he needed to contend with now was the grating contrast between modern, Integrated Britain - part of the FedCon and up to the millisecond in terms of technology, time, pace, taste and fashion - and Greece, an Isolate nation that looked to the distant past and it's heritage from antiquity to survive contemporary strife.

Transition would have been easier if he hadn't made a frenetic journey across Europe within hours of meeting "Mister Mad" at the Kazaklis' taverna. There would, doubtless, be repercussions about his using a Red Card facsimile freely to bluff a passage by VSTOL from that airfield in Bulgaria, easily the most difficult and stressful part of the whole enterprise; and the ride to Pristina airport; and the jet from there … well, They had wanted a delivery within twelve hours, hadn't They? Oddly enough, in retrospect, the whole affair had been exciting enough for him to regret completing it.

He gripped the warm balcony railing tight, himself in the grip of an un-named emotion that defied analysis but which an observer might have called an unease within the soul. Diverting himself, he looked at the skies to judge the weather, calculating that there wouldn't be any stargazing, nor any chess games with El Quatro. Which reminded him; at a cursory examination his telescope seemed to have shifted orientation slightly. Perhaps a bird perched on it, although he felt almost positive that birds were extinct within the London boundaries. Maybe a migrant.

Turning from the drab sky, he cast a knowing eye over the apartment from his balcony vantage, then re-entered, shutting the louvre doors behind him. Ever since moving in he'd had trouble from those doors; despite being so many floors up in a secure condominium set in a quiet residential area the alarm used to insist on chiding him should be leave the doors ajar or incorrectly locked. Eventually consulting a technical manual, he'd taken a pair of cable-cutters to the logic centre; the doors no longer squawked when left half-shut.

Oh the wonders of technology. Still, there were some decent things to be said about it. Fridges, for one thing; he had yet to encounter a properly working one in Greece. Apparently due to the exigencies of embargo and American supply, only the rich could afford them. A minor item, you might think, but when a person wanted a cold tube of beer it was a major disappointment to be presented with a tepid one.

He caught himself mentally. Cold tubes of lager? Jesus, Alex, remember Mexico. There is more to life than pandering to a dry throat. Somewhere in the world people are dying from dehydration and you worry about a cold drink.

Slightly less complacent, with a (cold) tube of lager clutched in his hand, Alex found his favourite fluid-seat to settle in. He decided to test one of the major technological differences between Greece and Britain, a true embodiment of FedCon-powered research and design as applied to conspicuous consumer consumption.

To his infinite disgust, the main subscriber selection now showing was "Pander", a game show of witless, lowest-denomination catering to bad taste. Put simply, people rang in to the studio to request guests, celebrities and presenters to perform explicitly degrading acts. The last time Alex encountered it he had rashly kicked the set and bruised his toes. Now he merely turned it off and fumed quietly. Greece definitely had something going for it. Any desire to vegetate in front of a television program, even a quality public channel one, flew out of the window. To make an insult more injurious, the picture quality had improved. Perhaps the London atmospherics had improved: it certainly cost enough in the anti-pollution surcharges for him to wish that true.

Bibor stood uncomfortably before his superior, Weiss. Bad news was always unpleasant to impart and it rarely earned those unfortunate to bear it any great reward either. All the more unpleasant when the bad news concerned a matter that Weiss had raised himself Bibor felt like the carrier of funeral tidings.

As requested seven people had been vetted. And Alexander Petrovic as well. Weiss raised his eyebrows a little at that: why was the Serb assessed separately, making a total of eight in all? That brought forward the news Bibor liked least. He showed Weiss the vetting report.

VETTING REPORT

SAVER 1037

SUBJECT: PETROVIC, ALEXANDER DRAGAN

FEDREGNO: 0772725436

STATUS: C.I.P.R.O. FILE (QV)

LOC:

FIL:

TUN:

ACT: PENDING

VETTING TEAM: S.I.E. VAN; I.O. CLEMENTS; I.O. KUREISHI

INSPECTING SUPERVISOR'S REPORT FOLLOWS:

Eagle Three carried out as per instructions (q.v. standing orders). During check following anomalies were detected under the terms of Contract (Contract Violations)

1) a) Apartment status: E3 subject currently owns in perpetuity 5 room apartment in secure condominium development, no rental, lease or sub-let in evidence, implying assets in excess of £250,000.

b) Subject currently owns Ford Khan Series 4 mod, market resale value est. £20,000 as at date of E3.

c) During premises search 1.5 kilos of loose-leaf tea (variety unknown) plus 0.5 kilos of coffee beans were discovered, market value total £3000.

d) 10cm refracting telescope (see below). Insurance documents indicate value of £27,000

2) a) Subject's salary £120,000 p.a. Savings £37,000.

b) No other source of income discovered. Further investigation necessary.

3) Atypical selection of specialist literature in view of subject's overtly anti-militarist stance

4) a) Telescope, as above, mounted on tripod.

b) Wehrmacht-surplus laser-sight mounted co-axially with telescope.

c) Austrian compensator mechanism attached to telescope mounting.

5) Downloading of information in personal computer reveals coded instructions to unknown third party (no decrpyt available at present). No indication of nature of user, communication or recipient.

After reading Weiss looked thoughtfully at his desk for a long time, thinking about the implications of the report. Substantial hidden income undeclared for several years, source unknown. It sounded very damaging for the subject, not to mention Weiss for having chosen him. Finally he spoke.

'Carry on with the recruitment selection, but go through an Eagle Two with Petrovic. If he comes through cleanly, make him the Offer. If not, if he's working for another power, disappear him.'

'Terminal Sanction?'

'Yes. Officially noted and approved as Terminal Sanction.' FedCon didn't kill double-agents, that would be immoral; no, they sent them to undertake hazardous duty at McMurdo Sound or at the bottom of the Philippines Trench.

Weiss dismissed Bibor. There was a sub-committee meeting scheduled for two hours beginning shortly and he still had to assimilate the necessary information for it. He wanted a report from September Station and RSFG Munich, too. As a replacement Bibor still failed to completely manage the routine details yet. Damn Chernovsky, wherever he was. By now the Russian had been declared officially "Lost". He could have been kidnapped, killed, defected, got amnesia, fallen ill - nobody knew what had befallen him, but the longer he remained absent the more likely it became that foul play was involved. As if he didn't have enough to cope with. In fact, while he remembered …

'Fenestre. Rossi.'

There was a slight delay until the call was acknowledged.

'Rossi here, sir,' came the fluid, accented English.

'Rossi, I'd like you to take up the matter of Sample A and Munich RSFG and the problem of how to hurry them along. Use my direct authority; in fact, take the Sky Clipper Downside and see them in person. They've taken far too long to assay. I take it you are familiar with their instructions?'

'Oh yes, sir.' Of course Rossi was; Weiss kept his staff on their toes and expected them to be informed. 'I'm on my way.'

Good. Rossi was reliable. He could be relied upon to bark loudly at people and get results, losing his temper just enough to make things go faster.

Fidelio Guido Rossi had been catching up with current affairs while on the observation deck, sitting in one of the seclusion cubicles watching a screen, when the call came through. Realising it was confidential he plugged in his earlink and so prevented anyone else from overhearing his conversation. After switching off Rossi dialled the Duty Officer to check on the next departure window. He bullied a little to get clearance for Number Three Shuttle, the solo pilot model; it went faster than the others and he wanted to get Downside quickly. He unplugged a flying suit from the rack in the Ready Room, signed out the suit and a helmet from the Sub-Flight Monitor and went through the airlock and into the shuttle bay. It took a few minutes to reach Number Three, clambering carefully over the walkway that skirted the other shuttles, reserved for emergency use. The small shuttle he wanted to use didn't have the large, luxurious airlocks of the other models so he needed all his innate agility to wasp himself inside the coffin-sized airlock and into the cockpit. After five minutes of pre-flight checks and warm-ups, getting to 94 effective, he traded banter with the Sub-Flight Monitor and asked for permission to leave ICE07.

Lights in the gloomy hangar blinked and flashed, a sequence of red and yellow warnings; a klaxon sounded within the Iceberg to warn crew that a shuttle would be departing in seconds, not to worry about loud noises and structural vibration. This would be the Italian's first time on a solo shuttle flight, but he didn't feel nervous, he'd got over 150 hours on the shuttles already and travelling Downside would be the easy part; returning to the Iceberg, riding a radar beam to dock with a moving body, now _that_ was un-nerving. Rossi secured himself with the seat harness and retainer cage, then tapped his earlink monitor. Working. Good.

Solid metal clunked and scraped outside, transmitting the sound only through the structure of Number Three shuttle. Rossi uncovered, unlatched and pressed the Big Red Switch to release the parking clamps. A shudder ran through both pilot and craft as the eight mechanical feet let go; now only the magnetic dolly held Shuttle Three in place on the induction rail, "only" a misnomer since it could hold an object of up to two hundred and fifty tonnes. Ahead a wall slowly split along the seam marked with yellow and black hazard stripes; beyond it was another similar door that remained shut. Shuttle Three moved into the airlock this created and the "wall" shut behind it. More lights were coming on, now, enough to accustom a pilot to light outside. Finally the outside wall parted to spill actinic light on the parking bay. Rossi hastily polarised his helmet, not wanting to get his vision affected by the sunlight sweeping over him. Finger on the throttle, he felt the shuttle lurch forward and arrow off the induction rail, outwards into an indigo sky. There was a brief, disorienting weightlessness before gravity reasserted itself as the aircraft began to dive. Rossi did a quick visual check, then a radar scan to detect any nearby traffic. There wasn't any: the Iceberg flew in it's own special "box" and other aircraft, sub-orbital or otherwise, kept well away if they were wise. He turned on the Pilot's Friend. This left him free to concentrate with both hands on a greenscreen detailing his mission brief, namely to chase RSFG Munich and Sample A, courtesy of his temper and tongue. For more rapid results he ought to land at Bergen-op-Gauss airstrip, the satellite facility that served RSFG itself. He punched up the codes and fed them into the Pilot's Friend, then sat back for the twenty minute journey.

However, it was not to be. Five minutes away from Bergen-op-Gauss, his aircraft suffered total systems failure and despite all the efforts of its pilot the shuttle fell out of the sky and destroyed itself in a terminal dive.

Alex at work: diligent, conscientious, motivated. He concentrated on the "Techna" range that had sprung into being during his absence; one of the wonders of FedCon was the way it occasionally leapt upon ideas and turned them into actualities with a startling speed utterly divorced from the prosaic committee-base procedural. His outline sketch of a series aimed, via television, at children had reached the planning stage with an in-house design team already assigned. He knew one of these involved, Chellakooty, and wasn't too pleased about it. The man was a neo-monetarist, profit-powered, not the person to design toys for kids.

MacDuff at work: he gave his Serbian minion a very peculiar look. He wondered how such things were possible, repeatedly, looking every time the thought struck him. No answer came to mind so he clocked-off for lunch. Peter immediately turned on his radio, hidden in a desk drawer. Someone else produced a hip flask full of anonymous liquid and passed it rapidly around. Neil finished reading a comic purchased earlier in the day. Alex looked at them all in turn with amused circumspection because if he guessed right -

MacDuff bounced back into the room unexpectedly.

'PUT THAT AWAY! TURN IT OFF! DON'T TOUCH THAT!'

His staff leapt upright in either surprise or guilt. The Scot glared at everyone with uniform venom and left for a second time.

Shortly after, Neil and Alex clocked off, riding an express lift to the main staff canteen together. Neil finished reading his comic (a nasty, violent, adult-oriented publication that had nothing comic about it) during the ride, Alex stared at a public information poster years old, that remained the only decoration within the lift. All four corners had been ripped away and graffiti scrawled on it. Some wit of years past had carefully amended the official poster message to read

MARS_HMELLOW_ NEEDS YOUR BONDS_AGE_

The floor heaved, the door pinged and gaped wide.

'Come on, the food's calling,' said Neil, ambling out.

Both chose Lasagni Nuovo al Pesci (that is, processed krill) as their main course. Alex beat Neil to a piece of bread and watched the other successively take a packet of crisps, an apple, a doughnut and a slice of processed cheesecake that always seemed to taste of synthetic chemical agents.

'That,' mumbled a masticating Neil, between mouthfuls of lasagne, 'was a particularly nasty trick of MacDuff's. He caught us.'

Alex wagged a chiding finger.

'Of course. I could predict it. You people ought to know better.'

During the afternoon a collection went around in aid of refugees in Algeria; Alex suddenly considered asking for a transfer out of CI and back to the DRA again. Lots of acronyms but basically a move from pen-pushing to people-aiding. He felt a vague sense of uneasy guilt, a response that begged an epiphany of some sort, although he didn't articulate matters so consciously. How could he sit at home and squander his life doing nothing positive when - amongst other catastrophes - thousands were dying of privation in the Maghreb's refugee slums?

Marie tapped him on the shoulder, trying to attract his attention but enveloped in melancholia, he'd totally failed to notice her and her collection bucket. He blushed, thinking that she might feel he had been deliberately avoiding a donation; that made certain he poured all the loose change from his pocket into the collection. Marie beamed - what a nice man!

MacDuff dumped a large wad of memory-paper in front of Alex.

'Right, friend Petrovic. I want you to format all this info, index it and then do a search on the seven - here, on this sheet - the seven criteria. By, oh, Friday morning stats call. Can you manage that? Get a clerk to help you do the legwork tomorrow.'

The Scot felt especially annoyed at catching his staff slacking. Although he wouldn't admit it, even to himself, Petrovic had gotten the work because he'd complete it in time - even though it was actually enough for two people.

Mrs. Petrovic's son decided to leave work early. He felt bored and fretful, wanting out of the office-prison of South Benford, for today at least. Neil waived the usual lift, having a lengthy evening appointment with a bar.

Despite leaving early, traffic was bad. A three-car road train had shed it's load and overturned a kilometre from the underground car-park at South Benford. Police bollards, cars, men and a helicrane were mustered around the wreckage, live invert midwives. A big, full, dark green bag seeping blood lay on the paving, a handbreadth from cars crawling past, doubtless containing the mortal remains of the road-train driver. Alex turned on the radio and punched in a station he knew, run by Albanian immigrants and broadcasting traditional Balkan music. A song came snaking out of the speakers, about valiant Shqiperi resisting Ottoman onslaught, vaunting blood, thunder and sacrifice.

Christ preserve us, thought Alex with a light overlay of despair, I can well do without this.

After fifty minutes the traffic stream began to break up and accelerate. The delay resulted from a series of secondary accidents, idiot drivers who rashly attempted to overtake in the opposing lane to make up lost time. Once en route for Badfort Towers Alex set the Khan to automatic, settled back in his seat and began to doze, knowing that when "thinking" the car took the safest, slowest route.

The car's grating metallic voice rasped from the cheap Dutch speakers and brought him back to full consciousness, informed that they had mutually arrived safely.

Home again home again. Or subterranean car-park in this case. One of the overhead strip lights was out completely, another flickered erratically and (of course) they lit the area directly around the lift entrance. Shadows leapt at each fluorescent blink, monochrome monsters. That image of a body in a bag, seeping blood, came back to Alex. He shuddered. Suddenly, the cavernous parking spaces seemed bleak and hostile.

Nothing vile leapt at him from the gloom on the way to the lift, but as the doors opened _something_ lunged at him -

'Christ!' he exclaimed in surprise and fright, jumping backwards.

The tall man in a Day-Glo trenchcoat regained his balance, stooped to retie the lace that tripped him, cast a suspicious glance at Alex and departed.

False alarm.

Alex laughed quietly and nervously to himself as he rode upwards. Twitchy. He produced his MagIC key before the lift stopped and strolled down the corridor, keeping a weather eye on Number Seven where the couple dubbed the "Gruesome Twosome" lurked. Occasionally they would glare out at people from a barely-open door for no obvious reason, two very old women (or possibly men) totally at odds with their neighbourhood and environment.

Today they remained indoors. Alex nodded sagely at their absence, as if he had some influence over them. He pushed the key cylinder home and waited until the door slid open with a hiss, extracted the key and dodged through before the door closed again. Odd. There seemed to be a funny smell, faint but discernible, in the hallway. A fire - or did he leave that slow-cooker on this morning? Visions of a completely melted kitchen sprang to life in his fertile imagination. Dropping his file-case, he kicked open the lounge door so he could hurry through tot the kitchen -

'Hello Alex,' said a stranger sat in front of the television viewing screen. A second, very large, stranger standing alongside the first merely nodded towards him.

- thieves. Burglars. Shit, these apartments were supposed to be impregnable - how'd they manage to get in? Kitchen, get to the kitchen, the mono-blade knives were there, get one of those.

He got to the kitchen doorway before a third stranger suddenly appeared in front of him from nowhere (afterwards he realised the man had been hiding behind the vertical storage units). About to lash out, Alex restrained himself when Stranger Number Three pointed a sinister-looking tubular device directly at his stomach. He didn't know what it was but didn't want to discover through painful experience.

'Now, whey don't we all sit down and have a nice cup of tea,' said the stranger in a remarkably bland voice.

Following a gesture from the armed man with his weapon, Alex walked backwards to the sofa.

'Sit down please Alex.'

Alex sat. His interlocutor seemed able to speak without punctuation or emotional emphasis. Nor, it seemed, was he paying any attention to the flat owner. Instead he devoted his entire attention to the viewing screen, showing a commercial channel.

'Hey, I like this one,' snickered the armed man.

Great, thought the victim. A moron, a monosyllabic goggler and a piece of furniture. Three beauties. Who were they? Thieves simply didn't behave like this.

A grim advert about Hepatitis D began running, giving details of how dangerous the disease could be, how relatively cheap the vaccine, could you afford to risk your health or that of your loved ones?

'Really,' sighed the watcher. 'If you believed all of them you'd just give up and die.' Seemingly losing interest, he turned to his aides and nodded. Clearly this sign-shorthand meant "back off and cease causing this person distress", because both did so.

'You can relax now. A little.'

He _still_ wasn't looking at Alex. Then he raised a hand and one of the minions went to work in the kitchen. Alex, meantime, looked around his apartment, half-seeing things. To his mild surprise and considerable curiosity there were no signs of damage or disturbance; the bookcase remained neatly ordered, the tapes and disks alphabetically arranged, card table undisturbed and the chess game as it had been, balcony doors firmly shut. From the very brief view he'd gotten of the kitchen there didn't seem to have been any pillage there, either.

Clinking sounds came from within the kitchen. Alex noticed that his computer interface had been turned on and left running, as the power light remained glowing. A sudden hard knot of fear formed in his stomach out of the already present anxiety. Had they been snooping around on his private library file? And were they capable of code-breaking? Could they be blackmailers?

A thick silence persisted for minutes: only a muted hissing from the viewing screen echoed sullenly around the room. Stranger Number Three re-emerged from the kitchen with one of the old melamine trays clasped firmly in both hands. Placing it carefully between Mister Bland and Alex, he indicated in turn a teapot, two cups, a small jug of milk, a bowl of sugar, two teaspoons and a strainer.

Mister Bland inspected the tray carefully.

'Careful. Everything on that tray is valuable. So is the tray.' He seemed to know property value. And to have some respect for it, too. Odd but encouraging.

Number Three, surprisingly, had managed to make a decent cup of tea, which Alex found surprising because with the advent of synthetics a great British tradition had dried up and died.

'Now, to business. We shouldn't really be doing this, strictly; it's against regulations. But I simply couldn't resist. Real tea, you know. Ah, money!'

Alex reached for a teaspoon, a stretching action mis-interpreted by Number Two, who abruptly strode forward and grasped Alex's shoulder in an agonising, paralysing grip, sending needles of pain shooting into his deltoid. Mister Bland opened his eyes slightly wider, then waved the muscleman off with a languid gesture.

'So sorry. Where were we? Oh yes.'

Mister Bland's vague demeanour remained vague, yet his eyes met Alex's directly and the latter had the uncomfortable feeling that beneath his uninvited guest's sheeplike exterior lay a far deadlier creature.

"Regulations"? Where did they get that phrase from?

'Um - regulations about what?'

'Oh, didn't I say, how very ah, remiss, of me. We're from FedCon.'

Good - not thieves. Bad - probably investigators.

'Ah - I take it that you're not the Stationery Supplies people then.'

'Goodness no.'

'Ah. Internal Audit, then.' Alex deepened his voice and raised it to project as effectively as possible. 'Well LET ME SEE SOME IDENTITY THEN!' he bellowed.

Mister Bland lost his cool to the extent of raising his eyebrows. One hand snaked into an inner pocket and reappeared with, of all things, a Red Card.

'This one, incidentally, is real.'

Alex examined it closely. Lots of ornate motile holograms. Real. Oh dear. The only people who carried cards like this were (cue sinister minor chords) UNION. Never mind his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen were now playing games, twitching nervously. Mister Bland sipped delicately at his drink.

'Nice tea, Alex, very nice. Real tea leaves, too, I notice. You've got kilos of it. Costing, say, nine months salary?'

Under this unpleasantly accurate questioning Alex felt himself blush. True, all true.

'Hmm. Yes. Drove home, didn't you? Nice to have an automatic in the car, isn't it. Mind you, mine took a bank loan to buy. Still making the repayments. I see you own yours.'

Another hit close to home.

'And some home you have here. Lounge, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, guestroom, hall and balcony - complete with telescope - overlooking the suburbs. In a secure condominium. You don't lease or hire or rent or contract because you own it outright, Alex. Goodness me. Expensive, what? I've got a wife and child, Alex. Even though I'm better paid than you I can't afford something like this.'

Nobody spoke for a while.

'And about that telescope, Alex.'

That was how he said it, with a literal full stop, the type of verbal device that meant more news of a worse nature to come.

'There's evidence on that computer of communication, via your signalling laser, with one of the Lunaville sites.'

SHIT! Thought Alex a his stomach dropped half a metre at least whilst the blushes were replaced by a bilious paleness.

'Let me put it to you, Mister Petrovic, that you work for a hostile agency, probably American, and that you are in return paid by them. That is how you can afford this little residence. Also you have a contact in the Foreign Assignment section of your offices. You collect and transmit information to the American base on the moon; your annual visit to Greece is simply a cover for the annual meeting with your controller. Stop me when I start to bore you. What you didn't -'

Alex waved his hands to stop the accusations.

'No no no! What the hell do you mean, "a contact"? I've never … Christ Risen, you're mad!'

Silence reigned again, this time with a gloating essence to it. One of the ambulatory pieces of furniture moved forward to place a small, unfolded square of paper between the two seated drinkers. From the appearance it seemed to be a name and address, although at this range Alex couldn't resolve the writing and didn't recognise it anyway.

'Your contact from Foreign Assignment. An amateur. Why did they leave this lying around? Sloppy.'

Alex recovered his emotional equilibrium slightly. Alright, they had discovered two of his more guilty secrets but this nonsense about a "contact" - that could surely only be an attempt to muddy waters because they (the ever-present authoritarian "THEY") lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him. Sledgehammer and nut.

Mister Bland still hadn't finished.

'In fact I don't think you're really Alex Petrovic. You're an imposter.'

Alex felt utterly floored. His jaw even sagged a little while he listened.

'No. Not the real Petrovic. You took his place when he got abducted across the Mexican border eight years ago and you've taken his place.'

'Nice fairy story,' said the Serb, voice dripping with sarcastic poison.

'Oh. Explain away all this, then,' retorted Bland with a scornful sneer and an expansive wave of the hand. 'Your flat and car and money, Petrovic. How do you explain possession. How!'

Yes, you'd like that, let me do the work for you in an admission. Why should I say anything at all -

'You may be wondering what leverage we have, Petrovic,' began Mister Bland, apparently able to read minds. 'Let me tell you what we have.

'One. Proscribed transmissions to and from the Moon.

Two. Undeclared income, in excess of two point five million in total.

Three. Evidence of complicity in conspiracy.

Four. Illegal imports from outside Federated Concordat-bounded territory.

Five. Defiance of and deliberate lying to a FedCon officer.

'All told, Alex, we could send you down for this. "Down" literally. Offences like this mean the Philippines Trench, or hard labour at the Pole, or maybe even despatch to the Moon.'

Despite these word's even tone there was pent-up emotion underlying them.. From what Alex saw he was in big trouble; although his interrogator might have exaggerated those penalties slightly, their effect would be horrendous. They made it clear to him that sentences would run serially, not concurrently. What he long feared as a background anxiety now looked to have become reality.

'Okay, okay, you want the true story, you'll get it.'

5) Another Country

SOUTH BENFORD TOWER

5:30 PM

Neil cadged a lift from Alex when they both clocked off at half past five. There was an ulterior motive; his friend's demeanour remained reserved and withdrawn all day long, much more so than usual. Normally Alex could be relied upon for a few droll comments or a bizarre Serbian aphorism that he probably fabulated, but not today. Neil wanted to find out why, but no enlightenment fell unfolded during the journey.

'Want to come up to mine?' asked Neil, when the car slowed, preparatory to letting the passenger dismount. The driver paused to think, momentarily, then nodded without any discernible delay. On they drove, still not talking. Neil put the radio on without asking. Christ, cheer up you miserable git, he thought uncharitably, no-one's died, have they. They parked near the small row of shops where Neil lived. Alex activated the BurglArrester; Neil whistled a small boy over and gave him a five-pound coin with instructions to guard the Khan. Before going up to the flat, Neil visited the Patel's corner grocery for a few little bits and pieces.

Alex hadn't visited Neil since the latter's move from Tottenham and took the opportunity to examine the surroundings. The flat sat in the middle of a row, built above the shops, ancient but well-built and still comparatively cheap by the ridiculous London standards. To enter they traversed the back street to a flight of concrete steps that led upwards to the level of the back doors. Ancient, crusted glass milk bottles lay abandoned on the walkway and a stray cat ran away from them.

The flat must have been old; it still had manual locks set into the door. Alex looked on with interest as Neil produced, inserted and cranked round a flat metal key.

'There. Welcome to the hovel,' announced Neil. 'Eric? You in?' A muffled shout issued from upstairs. That would be Neil's flatmate Eric, a student at the London College of Economics, who usually sat barricaded into his bedroom by books.

Inside, the flat manifested an air of complete chaos, as per normal for one of Neil's residences. Old papers lay everywhere, books with broken spines lolled on chairs, cups with cold dregs set up occupancy on every flat surface.

'Okay, sit down. Tea? Righto, coming up.' Off he went to throw dishes around in the kitchen, whistling gaily. Minutes later he reappeared with a tray, carrying two mugs of tea. To Alex's surprise Neil failed to turn on the viewing-screen; normally the television began playing the instant Neil arrived and didn't cease until the small hours of the morning.

'Tell me about it,' suggested Neil, matter-of-factly.

Alex cocked his head to one side, suspiciously. Could Neil be working for Them? No, surely not … no, certainly not.

Alex plunged in head-first. Or is that feet-first? he wondered.

'You've always asked me where and how I got all my money and I've never told you, because it was private. Well, last night the UNION broke into my flat to ask me that same question.'

Hang on, thought Neil, _I'm_ the union steward - what's he on about, breaking into his flat?

'Why would the union do that!'

'No, no you misunderstand me. U-N-I-O-N was what I meant.'

'"UNION". The spy people,' said Neil, frankly and blankly surprised.

'Yes! Yes.'

'Why! Alex, the only people who check up on us are Internal Audit.'

'Yes, well, I did some work for UNION in Greece, I can't say what so don't ask. I am in very big trouble, very deep shit, Neil. My guilty secrets. Oh, hell, why not tell you. They'll find out anyway. The money. I wrote a book on history years ago, a book on military history from antiquity to modern times in the Balkans, with emphasis on how the landscape affected affairs.'

Neil blinked again. Military history? Alex? The Serb was keen on history, everyone knew that, but he expressed

nothing but loathing for armies and war.

'Might I ask why you wrote about what you hate?'

'Oh, as a diversion when I was in the army. Don't look so surprised! We still have conscription. Well, to stop myself from going mad from boredom and abuse I wrote a book, using the divisional library. A long story. Anyway, the government took it up as an official publication. They gave me a lump sum and annual royalties from then on. So, er, I ended up with a lot of money. I bought my first apartment, my telescope, a car. Half of the money went to my family, in my mother's name. But I never declared any of it, I thought "it's my money, my work and I earned it before I ever joined FedCon so it's none of their business."'

Neil nodded, seeing that this obviously violated protocol yet didn't justify the use of an UNION search team on personal premises. His sense of incredulity stretched further with Alex's next revelation.

'Er - then I made a really big mistake. I started to communicate with someone in Lunaville Four, playing chess, swapping non-political gossip via a signalling laser. And I kept all the records on my own database. In code, but that didn't help much.'

'Oh God Alex you fucking moron! They could send you down the Philippines Trench for this - illegal earnings, talking to the Moon - to the _Americans_ on the Moon - , proscribed encoding - Jesus, they could have you grinding ice in McMurdo Sound! Buying a flat and a car and a telescope …' Neil was aghast.

Having his friend unwittingly echo the UNION visitor's threats did nothing for Alex's composure. From a vague, nagging anxiety his fears blossomed into a nightmare. A feral flower, indeed. The worst had yet to come. He explained that the interlopers left without arresting him.

'Oh great. Terrific. Don't worry, they'll be back. With a catch like you, they'll be back.'

Neil Nicholson shook his head in wonder. Alex had a chequered past, of that he was well aware, but a spy with an illegal source of income, who'd broken The Law As Graven In Stone by talking to Americans on the Moon - this ground felt dangerous indeed. It was hard to believe that the conversation had even occurred. Out of reflex he turned to the viewer, switching it on, giving it a swift wipe to remove static-acquired dust. There should be a can of anti-stat around but he couldn't locate it in the general chaos. What happened now? (Irrelevant burbling from the speaker about desert reclamation and the future it promised with "maximum return for minimal investment"). Were there any options open or not?

'You could volunteer to work for them. That would pre-empt any move they might try. After all, you said that you worked for them before.'

'What! You're joking. No way. I am not going to abase myself to them. Forget it.'

'Go to Mars?'

'Be serious.' Hardly a sensible idea. You needed a degree just to be a floor-cleaner on Mars.

'I am - Alex, your options are a bit limited. The Manual totally forbids everything you've done.'

They stared at each other gloomily. Neil left for a second, visited the kitchen and returned with eight plastic shrink-wrapped cans of beer. They had a vacuum jacket and were very cold when the seals got popped. Alex held one in both hands, rolling it against his forehead. He thought about the recent past.

Eric came downstairs after finishing his homework schedule, wanting to catch a programme on at half-ten, about the Callisto Mining Corporation. His field of study competence was Xenological Geology, an obstruse area touched on in the programme. In he walked, kicking a fax out of his way, to be greeted by even more mess than usual, empty cans lying around and a frowning, dark-complexioned stranger with a moustache slouched in one seat.

'Evening. This is Alex. Alex, Eric. Ah, could you get another eight full ones out of the chiller?'

Eric huffed slightly.

'Why can't you?'

'Because I'm too pissed.'

Eric went. When he returned the viewer, now tuned to a pirate channel, showed "adult animations" - ultra-violent cartoons. He sighed. So much for science and education.

Eight cans later all three were inebriated, Eric being chirpy, Neil swearing profusely and Alex being dour and glowering sourly. It felt worse than the bottom line in Mexico, he thought.

'Why did Mister UNION man accuse you of not being - uh, not you?' asked Neil, remembering a question he'd thought of earlier after his friend described yesterday's events. Not using any swear words because it was a serious question and merited a serious answer.

'Split personality?' suggested Eric, feeling that UNION must be rather dim-witted to investigate this saturnine but rather staid Serbian.

'Split? Split? Oh, I see, not the town. No.' Alex sounded scornfully dismissive. 'I got captured by the Americans, abducted overnight from Mexico.'

Both his listeners were abruptly silent. They continued to listen in semi-reverential silence as Alex told of his time, serving in the Disaster Relief Agency during Project Morning Glory - the aid-and-succour programme in Mexico, helping the Americano refugees in their camps.

It (the story, that is) began well before Morning Glory, with the accession to power within the New America Party of an unduly radical, xenophobic clique; known as the "Ousters", they deployed considerable behind-the-scenes influence in addition to their overt power. One essential part of their policy was the indefinite extension of the State of Emergency that had suspended the Constitution, allowing the NAP to crowbar itself into power in the first place. The second essential part of their strategy began with the disenfranchisement of non-Americans. To them, "non-Americans" meant, predominantly, the Hispanic and Negro population alongside Catholics, Indians, Asians, non-WASPs of all descriptions, who would be gradually reduced in status to third-class citizens without a franchise. Any rebellious or objecting parties were despatched to the grim Census Control Centres of Utah and Nevada. Having first secured its grip on power and ensuring that no milksop democratic backlash would succeed, the NAP created an underclass and set out to exploit them, blaming any flaws in "Fortress America" on them. It was a depressingly old story and strategy, with one great asset (for the NAP): it worked. Or, that is, it worked at first. The loss of American pre-eminence in the world didn't do the NAP any harm, either.

Gradually the Hispanic populations gravitated south, under varying pressures over time. Whenever a particularly severe pogrom took place, tens of thousands of Americanos would cross the border, in differing states of panic. Frequently all they possessed were their clothes. Mexico became a reluctant host, keeping refugees in squalid encampments just below the line of the Rio Bravo del Norte, not wanting any integration of them into the Mexican population since the ruling junta feared they might carry dangerous political ideas with them. After a decade of increasing population within the semi-permanent ghettos, FedCon moved in. Project Morning Glory was intended to set up an infra-structure parallel to the notoriously inefficient, under-staffed, under-paid and endemically corrupt Mexican administration of the camps. There existed great scope for improvements: sanitation, construction, education, agriculture, health projects, self-help packages and many sub-divisions of these.

Lack of sufficient foreknowledge prejudiced Morning Glory's chances of success. Because the Mexican government refused to properly integrate refugees, there had never been an official census in the rash of settlements that straggled along the border zone. Rumour had it that officials thought of a number, added six noughts and then regarded that as an accurate population estimate. FedCon itself reckoned on a refugee population of about one and half million; in fact they rapidly discovered a population of almost three million. It became necessary to rapidly increase the DRA staff who were actually on the ground by calling for volunteers from elsewhere within FedCon.

Enter Alexander Petrovic.

Working in Holland for Civil Infrastructure, Alex felt bored with paperwork; the clarion call for volunteers came as a godsend to him. Alongside thirty others working in Holland under the auspices of FedCon, he packed a few essentials and gone to Ijsselmeer airport. Not long out of his teens, ingenuous, idealistic, Alex was due to lose his fervour rapidly. Only thirty people turned up at Ijsselmeer to leave for their unknown destination; one person had learnt of the destination and suddenly decided not to go in violation of Contract.

The rest were told only after boarding a FLO Major Mover that they were to be assigned, en bloc, to the Refugee Support Scheme and would be based at Nuevo Laredo.

For a space of several seconds after the impersonal tannoy announcement nobody uttered a sound until everyone spoke at once. Their tone, collectively, sounded anxious: Mexico! And the most active part of the border, too, facing Texas. In fact they were due on one of the most active parts of the active zone.

That discovery lay in the future. In the meantime a briefing officer shouted over the hubbub, trying to get the message through, running up and down the aisles with sheets of paper.

'Hi,' Alex's seatmate had said. 'I'm Katrina. Are you scared, too?'

'Scared,' deadpanned Alex in reply. 'Ho ho.'

But he would be.

Recounting: Alex didn't describe everything he experienced, which would have been mightily dull in parts, not to mention long-winded. He sketched in the heat, dust, dirt, effort and enlarged on the less humdrum things. First he filled in the political scenery.

From the Mexican perspective: it was judged ill-advised to integrate immigrant refugees into the body politic - they might carry ideological or political contamination, there were too many of them, they could form pressure groups, and so on; still, deporting or barring entry would have been impractical - humanitarianism also had a bearing on this resolution, as did grants made available to the government to aid refugees; conflicting policies at government level forced incoming pogrom-fleers to settle in a squalid ghetto-land just south of the US-Mexican border, with more populous nodes based around centres such as Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Piedras Negras, Ciudad Juarez, Mexicali and of course Tijuana. The principal area of concentration was near Allende, and became known as "the Campo".

From the American perspective: a suitable recipient for the expelled millions suited the New America Party "just fine". World opinion would jib at victims being marched, for example, into the Atlantic Ocean (a comparatively mild suggestion compared to some from the more extremist NAP members). No, merely expelling them across the border to mingle with their cousins was _far_ better. Those with a liberal conscience wept blood at what happened. With such expulsions the continued instability of Mexico persisted, which again suited the New America Party "just fine". A feeble, internally-wracked neighbour presented far less of a threat than an assertive one, also presenting the NAP with the perfect excuse to maintain the State of Emergency and deny their countrymen any recourse to the Constitution. More, it appeared to show Americans what a mess Hispanics could make of their own country if allowed to run it. Of course, to instigate such chaos and maintain it meant covert American destabilisation activity - which Alex would return to.

From the refugee perspective: encamped in their slum cities, devoid of almost every requisite for a basic living, exploited by their host government politically - their existence within the USA must have been an ordeal indeed for them to consider such conditions an improvement. The Americanos, being people with aspirations, did not like the thought of remaining in their slums; they appreciated any attempt to help them. FedCon had been presented to them within the United States as an evil, corrupt, tentacular, tyrannical, planet-wide bureaucratic dictatorship, aiming for total control of humanity. Initially the DRA workers found themselves treated with hostility and suspicion, though over time they came to be revered.

From Alex's perspective: he had come to serve in a moral crusade, looking for an epiphany.

During their first night the thirty newcomers watched a display of vari-coloured lights, kilometres to the east of their camp; blue, red, green.

'Nice,' commented one. 'A firework display.'

'Fireworks nothing,' replied another. 'Those are tracer bullets.'

A few disturbed murmurs ran round the group at that little revelation. Next morning they discovered that the Americans subjected Camp Castro to bombardment all night long, for no especially good reason. Alex helped pick up the pieces for the rest of that day, shifting rubble, digging out bodies, driving a pocket bulldozer, giving blood. After working solidly for eight hours a small group of the volunteers sat on a stone wall, resting. All of them were dirty and dusty and most had blood smeared on them, from triage or first aid duties. A canteen of water passed backwards and forwards between them. Alex took a long swallow, sluicing away the grit lining his mouth.

'Why? Why?' he grated from behind clenched teeth. 'Thirty dead. Twice that many injured. A dozen children in the school bus alone, shot by machine-guns all night long. Christ Risen, may those Americans all go to Hell.'

Katrina, sitting alongside, nodded glumly and dumbly in agreement. They both removed the bodies from that bullet-sieved bus.

A baptism of fire. Alex rapidly developed a loathing for the Americans only a few kilometres away across the river, as days became weeks and ran into months and the random attacks continued. No rhyme or reason, merely random - or so he thought, until experience taught him otherwise. There was an hierarchy of military might across the Rio Bravo: the lowest rung of the ladder and most numerous were the Texas State Militia, an offshoot of the National Guard; next were the ten regular divisions of the US Army; last were the unseen Special Forces Commando units. The Texas State Militia were the worst by far, gun-toting and trigger-happy irregulars whose idea of fun on a Saturday night seemed to be machine-gunning 'Cano refugees. The word "Militia" happened to be a misnomer, to, conjuring up an image of part-time weekenders with obsolete rifles, instead of the full-timers with heavy machine guns, mortars, artillery, helicopters and light tanks that existed in reality. Regular US Army soldiers rarely engaged in action, unless tensions were very bad and the Mexican Army ranged itself against them. Engagements took place only three or four times per year. The Commandos were never seen. By deduction, they had strict instructions not to attack civilians, since they were never seen or heard. But they existed; almost every week they sneaked across the border and demolished bridges, monorail lines, marshalling yards, runways, airport towers, oil tanks, communication lines and junctions, vehicle parks, storage depots, anything that could be classed as strategic in target terms.

By such means they kept all of Northern Mexico destabilised. Then, too, there just so happened to be the time Alex got kidnapped. Out for an evening stroll on his own after a hard day of driving, digging and unloading supplies, he had seen what he thought in fright to be a moving log.

Fooled by twilight, he crept closer, finally recognising with a horrid intestinal lurch, a person. A person punctured - a silly word but the first one that came to mind - punctured. Blood dribbled from the painfully crawling figure, victim of a dreadful accident, surely, wounded in a dozen different places.

He stopped walking and rushed to help, but the figure continued to crawl, gasping, trying to physically escape from the pain that dogged it.

Christ, he thought, what do I do? They're dying -

Stabilise. Stop them moving, stop the bleeding, subdue the pain. Yes; one thing he always carried ( a legacy of two years hated conscription) was a Premaid kit, compact and comprehensive. His first-aid skills weren't too bad, being kept in practice here on the Campo.

Fumbling the kit open, he luckily found a syrette of Pseudo-Morph immediately, rapidly injected the sufferer in the neck, threw away the empty tube. Then came packets of arresting agent, a mixture that both sterilised and stimulated clotting action. He used every packet, tearing them open with his teeth. Lastly he used another syrette, an anti-shock agent. Using his knife he carefully cut away torn clothing and bound over the wounds with medical adhesive tape.

You poor swine, he thought. If this is the best I can do you won't last long. Have to call for help. Where's my TACT? Have to call camp, get a medical team here, so now where did I put it?

To better aid the victim he had unclipped the bulky TACT unit from his belt and left it nearby. Except that it no longer lay on the riverbank.

Panic! If he couldn't find it this man would die. As he turned -

A hard, unyielding metal thing came over his head, pulled down and back tight across his windpipe, effectively gagging him. Trying to reflexively move his arms he found that they were pinioned, too.

The Texas militiaman with his rifle firmly choking Alex, kneed his captive in the kidneys with a casual, brutal skill that spoke of long practice. The prisoner, rasping breath in and out through flaring nostrils, felt a sledgehammer blow that hurt and then went deeper and hurt even more. Tears of pain ran down his cheeks: he felt he was dying.

Dark shapes moved forward. There were three more of them, realised Alex. Three others, all carrying guns. With fixed bayonets. Remembering the wounded man, he grimaced in pain and fear.

'Ah, crying? We've got ourselves a real wuss this time. A real savage,' said one uniform.

'Yeah, a real wuss. Where's the spic?'

'Over here. You didn't do much good with that pig-sticker of yours, sucker's still alive.'

It wasn't easy for Alex to understand their drawling speech, which they kept low for fear of discovery, nor did the slowly receding pain in his back help to concentrate his attention. He did recognise their fatigue-cap badges; Lone Star Guards, Texas militia of the worst ilk. They kept necklaces of human ears for trophies.

'Pull him over. Over there. That's right.'

Two uniforms dragged the gasping, dying man in front of Alex. A mustachioed face abruptly interposed itself between Alex and the victim.

'So you spend yore time fixing up spics, do you? See how we fix 'em, you greasy Commie rag. Junior, do yore stuff, finish the job.'

The face disappeared. "Junior" appeared in front of them, grinning an entirely humourless rictus that would have been more at home on a cat than a man. Raising his rifle, Junior bayonetted the helpless man repeatedly and with vigorous relish. Un-necessarily, really, since the first thrust had been fatal.

Alex sagged, helpless with horror. Empty roaring sounds echoed around his head. Carelessly, his captor misjudged his captive's relaxation and slackened the punishing grip.

'You BASTARD!' screamed Alex, leaping free and kicking Junior in the crotch with all the strength he could muster with his DRA-issue reinforced steel-toecap boot.

The American collapsed in silent agony, clutching his pulverised crotch. His gun dropped on it's butt and began firing enthusiastically all by itself, bang bang bang.

Alex didn't see one of the others step up and silence the weapon because the man who had been doing the choking came up and battered the side of his face with something cold: hard metal.

Falling forward, he thought that the ground rose to meet him instead, until he actually hit the river bank and winded himself. The whole left side of his face felt numb and his vision was funny. No pain, not until a foot brushed his chin and he trembled with the dull, enormous pangs that shot through his jaw.

Broken, he thought, slowly. Broken jaw. Don't move it.

Unable to judge time, Alex couldn't even guess how far the four dragged him, expecting to die at any minute. Tears ran down his cheeks when his face hit a rock or another type of obstacle. Still the foursome didn't kill their prize. What he later thought of as the worst time in his life, easily, began as he was dumped in a canoe that the militiamen rapidly paddled across the Rio Bravo. More dragging, cursing, punching; Junior took an especial delight in tormenting their prisoner. His malicious glee was tempered by an inability to walk properly, so he contented himself by kicking Alex's kneecaps repeatedly and with considerable force.

Finally the group reached and stopped in an encampment, of the clandestine kind, it's scale only partly revealed b the sounds and smells prevalent.

They pushed him down a flight of stone steps, where he smashed his chin on stone at the bottom and passed out for a while.

Coming to, Alex found that his bladder had emptied, soaking his trousers. Next, he sat with his back to a wall, from which rusty but still hale chains snaked to secure his wrists and ankles. The place had to be small, judging by the dulled noises he made, since the militia didn't see fit to provide any type of illumination. It stank, too.

All during the slow night and into the false dawn his jaw ached, at first periodically, then permanently and it got worse. It hurt if he moved to breathe; it hurt if he hung his jaw open; it hurt even more if he shut his mouth. A perpetual nagging bruise reminded him of that punch - or kick - in the kidney, making it painful to lie or sit. The chains and manacles weighed heavy on his ankles and wrists, cutting and chafing. Sleep never came, only a pale shade of it that made dreams dance around the reeking cell.

A recurrent question flitted about his feverish thoughts. Why hadn't they killed him? Come to that, why bother to haul him across the Rio Bravo? Texas Militia never crossed over.

Those shots, perhaps, scared them into retreating. They should have just killed him on the spot. After all, they were certainly capable of it. Perhaps, in crossing the river, they had exceeded their orders. They could have been chasing that dying Americano, or maybe stumbled across him on the wrong side of the river. If they had killed him, well, maybe they had been after a prisoner. If they weren't supposed to cross the United States/Mexican border, then they ought to have a concrete result, a tangible asset to trade off against their transgression. Or they could have orders to bag a FedCon prisoner. For interrogation. That thought made him shudder, no theatrical affectation but a real shiver of fear, facing the thought that he would be tortured to death.

For all his waking nightmares, nobody came to see him. Dawn came. Daylight fell into the cell through a small, barred window set into the ceiling.

Escape? No, forget it. Injured, chained, imprisoned, doubtless guarded, within a major hostile encampment on the wrong side of the border. Miracles simply didn't that conveniently, despite the muttered prayer Alex sent up. With a sudden visceral surge, he realised that Alex Petrovic wasn't unique, that this experience must have been undergone by countless victims of the NAP already. Except that they weren't members of a supra-national aid entity, capable of interceding on behalf of its members should it choose to do so.

As day limped on, no-one came to torment, interrogate or feed him. The pain in his jaw became intermittently even more intense, making Alex faint for seconds or minutes. Pains in his knees and shins made themselves known - especially his knees, the targets of Junior's studded US Army surplus boots. Also, almost apologetically, his stomach announced itself, grumbling loudly to remind him that nothing edible had passed his lips since noon of yesterday. Thirst would tell first.

A fusillade of shots from outside made him jump in a painful panic, but nothing else happened. Gradually the cell heated up as day dragged slothfully on and the stinking straw gave off even more disgusting vapours.

After long-endured delay the cell door was unlocked and thrown open. Large figures in uniform unlocked the manacles and frog-marched the lone occupant outside, up the steps and southward, towards the river and a party of waiting canoes. A small group of people on a sandbank in midstream watched the progress of the prisoner and escort. The group included Camp Monitor Lafarge, who had been frantically busy talking to UNION and DRA about their missing member. She watched in angry silence as three soldiers escorted Petrovic into a small powerboat and sped across to the island. In mid-stream, both sides held it to be neutral territory.

Shit! Thought Lafarge in alarm, he looks a mess. What have those animals done to him!

'Petrovic? Can you walk?' she asked.

Alex looked a mess because he was one. His face, scratched all over, was disfigured by an immense purple bruise, he had two black eyes and his knees seemed to consist of equal parts straw, bloody denim and flayed skin. He could barely stand upright.

'Gmno,' he mumbled, not daring to shake his head.

The reason for his being there and alive at all was his reflexive kicking of Junior, an act that saved his life even if it secured him a good beating; the Americans, after all, intended to kill any witness to their trespass onto Mexican soil. The firing from Junior's gun had been heard and the bullets thus fired were discovered embedded in sand and logs; they were concrete evidence that Americans committed an act of trespass across the border onto Mexican soil. Lafarge called the American Army colonel in charge of the Lone Star Guard camp to inform him that if the abducted FedCon employee was returned intact, the bullets would also be returned to their owners.

The seriously embarrassed camp's commanding officer raged at the four transgressing militiamen, then had them arrested, imprisoned, beaten and Junior shot by firing squad in full view of Mexican, FedCon and 'Cano observers. He wanted to make sure that the rest of his wilful command didn't ever disregard his orders about total deniability of operations again.

Thus Alex returned to the land of the living, battered but alive.

Neil and Eric soaked up the story readily, almost dying to ask question after question but not quite daring enough to intervene. Alex left out a lot more than he told: the Purple Plague, Hells Highway, wild leave in Nuevo Laredo, long hard dirty slogging to rebuild devastated housing - all sorts.

'Did the locals like you?' asked Eric. 'I've heard that some of them didn't like you, thought you were like neo-colonists.'

Alex finished his recounting more cheerfully.

'Like us? They loved us! Don't confuse the Mexicans with their government and don't confuse the 'Canos - the Americanos, the refugees - with the Mexicans. The government didn't like us, oh no. But the people were different. You could walk into a cantina anywhere and people would thank you. They'd give us Catholic medallions, crucifixes, food, money on occasions and these were poor people. After my truck driving I got to be well know, or maybe because that was the way I drove. After that I couldn't pay for drinks or meals in the Campo, the Canos wouldn't let me. '

'How many of your lot were killed?' asked Neil in a touch of morbidness.

Pausing, Alex counted. Odd, that. At that time he knew it would never leave his mind. Now -

'Let me think. One canny man left before joining. Another got himself killed in a fight in Nuevo Laredo. Oh, and someone else ran off to Tijuana, never to be seen again. One died of the Purple Plague, another so badly debilitated that he returned to Holland. Two died when the helicopter was shot down. Six were injured and hospitalised for part of their tour. One got killed by a sniper from across the river. Ah - and seven were killed driving trucks up and down Hell's Highway, which is what we used to call Route Thirty Seven.'

A total of twenty casualties, eleven fatal. Fortunately for the volunteers who came afterwards, the lessons of the first Project volunteers were learned and it became unusual to lose more than one or two members on a tour.

Bloody hell! You devious dark horse, Petrovic! thought Neil. You went through all that and never told anyone at Benford about it, not even a hint.

'It can still tingle a bit if the weather is extra cold,' said Alex, in reference to his jaw. 'And the kneecaps are artificial. Had them replaced in Nuevo Laredo by DRA medical while they put my jaw back together. They need replacing every four or five years.'

Both his drinking partners shook their heads in wonder.


	4. Chapter 4

6) High Times

GERMANY

HAMBURG DOCK ZONE

Lather was having a nightmare, he knew and understood it, but still couldn't wake up or stop the dream from relentlessly happening even as it got worse and worse. Until only a few weeks ago when the Terrible Thing happened a nightmare would only take him to a certain point before reality impinged enough to wake him.

Not any more. This time he'd been dreaming of being on a deserted beach, at dusk, with only a wind from the sea making a noise. The waves seemed dark, even oily, the sand had a reddish cast to it and stretching before him endlessly was a trail of footprints in the sand. Compelled to follow the footprints, he trudged on, noticing how the dunes to his left gradually rose above him and became a sheer cliff. While he walked on the sea washed up the beach behind him, cutting off any retreat. Then he began to notice the footprints weren't quite … proper, there were six toes to each impression. Nor was that all - the longer he followed the trail, the more grotesque the prints became, twisted, malefic. Ahead in the distance the cliffs curved around to meet the shoreline in a dead blank rock wall that met the sea. Behind, lapping three metres deep, the sea barred any withdrawal. And ahead, just vaguely visible, a dark shape in the distance, the creator of those "footprints", squatting beneath the cliff, becoming clearer in detail as he drew nearer.

Not surprisingly, Lothar woke with a shriek when his squat-mate, Peiter, shook his shoulder.

'I've told you,' snapped Lothar peevishly at breakfast. 'I haven't dropped any acid or Hype. Nothing hallucinogenic, okay? I haven't taken any so I don't have any so stop pissing me off.'

"Breakfast": an expansive term for half a carton of almost stale soya milk, a black market duck egg acquired in a trade, a few stale slices of wurst already spotted with mould. Their portable heater/cooker unit lay in one corner of the dully-echoing attic space, abandoned since they didn't possess anything to cook on it and it was out of fuel tablets anyway. No matter, the weather was warm, the attic well-insulated - perhaps they could trade it, mused Lothar.

'Okay, okay.' Peiter sulked for a minute. He really liked the strong psychedelic agents but the supply had dried up of late. A crackdown, some dealers said. A bottleneck, others said. Quality control, said others. A drug war, said the police, who knew the truth.

''D'you want some hash?' asked Lothar, offering a tiny metal pipe. Peiter shook a reluctant head. Smoking cannabis or any of its derivatives made him ravenous but once again - nothing to eat.

Lothar carried on. As the fumes rattled round hid lungs he cast a bleary eye over their current abode, idly reflecting on how they'd gotten in.

The two were living within the false ceiling of a huge derelict warehouse at the very eastern end of Hamburg's dock zone. Originally it had been a bonded warehouse, holding liquor, tobacco, electronics, software. A false ceiling was installed to hold air-conditioning, lighting and alarm systems: it had been constructed strongly to support such equipment, more than adequate to hold the weight of two people. When the Port Authority opened up new macro-cellular modular warehouses the older ones had been stripped of their fittings and left to decay. Apparently it was uneconomical to demolish them immediately and through oversights one or two - such as the one Lothar and Pieter occupied - remained standing.

Initially they'd only come in, out of a nasty positive pH rain after sneaking in through rents in surrounding fences. Discovering a vertical rust-encrusted ladder, Pieter borrowed their flashlight and climbed seventy metres to discover their best hiding place so far. Later they removed the ladder and made a rope one of their own. Even if both were out of the attic they could still get back up, since Pieter stole a remote-control spindle and beamer unit. All you needed to do was point in the approximate direction, press the button and hey presto, down came a rope ladder. To hide it after use, simply press reverse. If ever the technology they could resurrect the old iron ladder.

Melodramatic and over-elaborate? No, not really. They had used it twice so far to hide when in fear for their skins. First occasion, they were about two minutes ahead of a gang of enraged Hell's Angels. The Angels thought that they were getting twenty per cent pure heroin, seven grams worth. What they got was an eighth gram sample plus six-and-seven-eights of uncoloured cosmetics base. Neither Lothar nor Pieter expected their violent victims to inject to soon after purchase and suffer the puking horrors. They were glad of the loft then - the Angels had come hunting with swords and shotguns … On the second occasion; when the Polizei made a huge sweep through the whole dock district for low-life of all sorts, especially druggies. They'd hid after frantically running, not daring to emerge for three days.

'Hey, Pieter, what say we trade the heater? We could get a fair bit for it..'

'What? Talk sense! D'you think they'll trade dope for that down on the circuit? Don't be an arse.'

Lothar swore back.

'You stupid Dutch tosser! I meant we take it down to Apple Street, flog it there. There's loads of traders that end - second-hand, third-hand, pawn shops, barter stalls. Take the money, right? And go back to the Circuit. Stop on the way and get some food, salad stuff.'

Pieter hummed to himself for a few minutes, thinking. That hater was their Number One item, German Wehrmacht surplus, compact, powerful and efficient, worth about seven hundred although they'd be lucky to get three, four if the gods were with them. On the other hand, the loft insulation was excellent, so they didn't actually need a heater. Cooked food? Limited to toast and eggs, actually -

'Okay! Let's do it!'

They had stolen the heater anyway so it wouldn't be that much of a wrench to part with it.

Yuri's: a garish neon sign above a heavy riveted door, paintless after a decade of use and abuse. Under Hamburg's licensing regulations, Yuri's was a club, open only during the hours of darkness, less strictly monitored than an inn, bar or hostel. Being on the Circuit, the clientele were whores, dealers, users, pimps, runners and general drifters. People who were serious about obtaining illegal services gravitated towards places such as Yuri's; only fools and tourists bothered to deal with the people who stood on street corners.

Lothar and Pieter both met at Yuri's. Pieter being there after fleeing from Holland and a badly bungled robbery, Lothar running from the aftermath of the Terrible Thing. Both liked the relaxed atmosphere where tension rarely surfaced.

Now clutching various groceries, they moved through layers of smoke to the secluded seats farthest from the bar. Dealer territory.

'Hi!' said a weaselly little Moroccan known as Ben, whom they knew. 'Hey, do I have a deal for you. Sit, sit.'

They sat with Ben and made some purchases; marijuana resin, Hype and a few metamphetamines. By convention they remained to smoke one with their dealer.

'Are you available for, ah, work, lads?' asked Ben in his appalling German.

'Work? That depends, really. What kind, how's the pay, and so on,' replied Lothar.

Ben tapped his nose.

'Follow me.'

He led the two wary men to what had been a storeroom. Pieter nervously fingered a double-edged knife hidden up one shirt sleeve; Lothar shrugged fretfully, ready to act in a hurry if need be.

There was only one item of furniture in the room, a cheap plastic table. Behind it stood three men - no, make that a woman and two very large men. Shit! thought Lothar, bad news. What if they get nasty! How do we cope with them when carrying ten tonnes of groceries in our arms?

Happily, there was no need to cope.

"Mrs Schmidt" introduced herself, then explained, after dismissing Ben, that she would like to offer them employment. Pieter by reputation had a way with gadgets, Lothar was large and strong and most relevant of all, the duo had a secure bolthole in the docks zone. Location unknown but definitely a secure rathole.

What the lady wanted were pictures and diagrams of a special secure warehouse deep in the dock zone - hence the offer made to the two dock rats. They would be given a Velos camera and five thousand in advance, an additional twenty thousand upon successful completion. The greed circuit present in the human mind promptly switched on in both Lothar and Pieter. They accepted. No questions about the warehouse were answered, but they worked it out between themselves on the way home; it must contain impounded drugs, taken from the streets, from black market sources, from grey market medical houses. They knew Mrs Schmidt fronted for some vague personality in the background, but the five thousand marks and the Velos camera were reassuringly concrete.

Thus: a night later after a thorough reconnaissance they had gotten past an inner security fence, across an inert electronic moat, through a positive maze of hive-like modular warehouses. Pieter drew a map during daylight to ensure they reached Storage Facility #122. Now, from a hundred metres away they carefully lay low, taking a few pictures then moving, taking a few pictures then moving, trying to cover all sides of the warehouse. Surprisingly enough there was still activity at this late hour, vast hoverbed trucks loading and unloading, attended by flocks of uniformed staff.

Maybe it wasn't drugs after all, concluded Lothar. They noted at least six different alarm systems in or around 122 and some of those - uniformed? - staff carried guns.

'ARE YOU TWO HAVING FUN?' boomed a hollow voice above them. They had missed the seventh alarm system, a powered miniature glider carrying an electronic snout and operated by a keen-eyed Customs Control officer, who switched on the glider's spotlight and played it over the horrified duo.

'REMAIN STATIONARY. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.'

Lothar froze, thinking a single thought repeatedly. Pieter leapt up and fled as hordes of uniforms from the warehouse raced towards them.

'STAND STILL,' echoed the giant voice from above.

Pieter kept right on, straight into the now activated electronic moat, which promptly gave him an electric shock powerful enough to throw him to the ground, stunned. Lothar stayed perfectly still, until he noticed the red epaulettes on the shoulders of the Customs Control officers pointing guns at him.

Oh shit, he thought, scared enough to start shaking. The Fed.

7) Power Cut

JULY 1

ASHTABULA

OHIO

"Responsibility".

That had to be the word, responsibility. Cleavon knew how to _say_ it and he knew what it meant but dammit if he knew how to spell the wretched word. After all, there seemed to be lots of vowels in it. He could guess at the spelling, of course. He managed "R-E-S-P-O-N" before deciding against it. If this application form got spoilt they might not accept it. Cow crap! Why couldn't he have done better at school! And despite all the high-tec surveillance gear arrayed around him nothing would tell him how to spell.

A quick check of the compound screen showed nothing unusual. Good; he might get this application finished tonight. If he didn't, Marie would chew him out and go sleep in the guest room again.

'Cleavon, you there?' asked a speaker unit. That would be Pollock, the new supervisor, checking up.

'Yes. What's up?'

'Oh, nothing special. There's a new Guy patrolling your section of the fence tonight, just watch he doesn't trip any alarms, okay?'

After a wait of several minutes, sure enough, the Guy patrolling the perimeter hove into view. Big and muscly and smooth in motion, carrying a heavy machine gun.

No use asking a Guy about spelling. It (actually a "he" but sterile and usually seen as genderless) had the IQ of a small child. Dedicated, loyal, tireless and _stupid_ because Uncle Sam didn't want intelligent Genetic Utility Infantry to pose a threat to Homo Sapiens. The Guy plodded out of sight behind the entrance sign that read "Welcome to Ashtabula! Atom City USA!". Cleavon nodded to himself in affirmation that no matter how dumb he might be, the Guy made him look smart. He carried on with his form, carefully. Should he get caught "shirking" he would be summarily dismissed. Although there were no monitor screens in the post there might be vision sensors hidden in order to spy on him, nor could you ever be sure that there wasn't an observer watching you at some time.

Cleavon worked as one of the shift security guards (for which read "night watchmen") monitoring the immense perimeter fence that guarded "Atom City", festooned with black lights, radar traps, seismic sensors, detection apparatus of every kind. The fence itself was electrified and topped with mono-molecular wire. Moats ten metres wide and three metres deep lay both in front of and behind the fence, spanned only at the guard post by a narrow bridge. Patrols swept the barren land and made a point of killing any wildlife encountered, ensuring that "critters" did not cause false alarms by encroaching on the fence zone. Wildlife, though, did not thrive in this environment.

And why ..? Because of nuclear energy. Fusion power was all very well but fissile materials derived from the fission process were essential to the American nuclear weapons program. Uranium, plutonium, thorium, all came from the clandestine shadow plants at Ashtabula. Nuclear energy produced there powered the domestic and industrial areas of the North-Eastern USA in a convenient military-industrial symbiosis. On the debit side a combination of pollution, waste and accidents had made an area of concern to conservationists both moderate and radical: hence the security. Fiscal competition, plus a little energy blackmail, led to occasional forays against Atom City by Pennsylvanian Energy Authority Agents: hence the security. Internally the heads of Atom City worried about their continuing commission from the Department of Energy, Fissile Fuels Division and the Department of Defence, Fissile Procurement Division: hence the security. Also, the spectre of nuclear war persisted in the human psyche; Pennsylvania wished to retain and remain the -sylvan part of it's name; the conversion of Transylvania to "Transplutonia" in the Last War was remembered: hence the security.

The security was intended to prevent intruders from entering and thieves from leaving. It worked. There had been no incident for over seven months now and the last one involved a rather pathetic attempt to break in by three West Virginians from an extremist environmental group (all three now safely dead). Cleavon thought it reasonable, therefore, for his taking time out to fill out his application to the New America Party in the small hours of the morning, unworried by the possibility of disturbance (he left a small blank space to fill in later when he got the chance to check that spelling).

Reasonable, but wrong.

A screen started to flash; a speaker buzzed; a string of codewords raced across a monitor.

'Attention please, attention please, we are now being subjected to an attack,' droned the artificial voice of the sentry speaker.

Cleavon sat up in abrupt surprise, listening to the incongruously calm computer-generated voice.

'An attack! From where!'

'An assault by persons unknown conveyed in three air-cushion vehicles. They are headed towards this section of fencing. Attention please, attention please, we are now being subjected to an attack. Att-'

He shut out the annoying voice. Another one came through, Pollock shouting questions at him. Cleavon ignored the supervisor, rotating cameras and running through the detection spectrum.

There …

Distant but rapidly drawing closer, three vehicles, yes. Three hovertanks skimming along in follow-the-leader formation. They seemed ready for action, lights extinguished and hatched locked down, turrets tracking slowly from right to left. When they got nearer to the fence zone passive defence measures started up; huge red warning holograms materialised: STOP; DANGER; AVERT; LETHAL FORCE WILL BE USED; NO MORE WARNINGS.

'Cleavon! Who the hell are they! Jesus Mary Joseph, Central, are you getting any of this?'

On came the tanks, remorseless and faceless, neither slowing nor speeding, making no radio contact with the signalling sentries, closing fast on the fence and leaving a rolling wake of dust behind them.

Tank number one cut power just short of the outer moat. Carried on by momentum, it sailed into space and dripped into the moat at almost a hundred kilometres per hour, wrecking itself with a noise Cleavon could hear and a tremor that he felt deep in his bones. The next two tanks raced over the improvised bridge of their fallen comrade, number three slowing down considerably. Number two ran straight into the fencing with a huge blue flash as the whole section shorted out. Leaving a great ragged rent and carrying sheets of wire netting, the hovertank crashed into the inner moat and stopped dead. Tank number three shot through the newly created hole and over the smoking wreck of the second tank, headed for Lake Erie and the PowerPlex with nothing to stop it. Cleavon rotated cameras to track the rapidly disappearing vehicle, shaking his head in awe and fear. He wanted the tank to stop, turn around, vanish, do anything except carry on. The tank merely dwindled into the distance and darkness beyond the camera's ability to resolve.

Pollock's voice still rang, panic-stricken, from the speakers, issuing instructions, another supervisor shouted from another speaker and alarms shrieked all along the fence.

Then, unexpectedly, a series of explosions came from the direction that the assaulting tank had arrowed away to, then another violent firecracker, then another.

Cleavon slumped in his seat with a deep, dark pit opening up in his stomach, looking at the screens but no longer seeing them. Cow crap. With what just happened he'd be lucky to live to see tomorrow, he couldn't have seen it but that, of course, in the current State of Emergency, made no difference. Just in case, he'd torn up the application form and burnt it, ground up the ashes and mixed them up with the waste in his refuse bin. Inspiration struck him and he powered down the monitors in the booth, left and locked the door. A quick sprint brought him to the wrecked tank lying in the outer moat. The turret, torn from its mounting by the force of the crash, lay at an odd angle with smoke seeping out from the narrow gaps between the hull and turret base.

This, thought Cleavon, will convince them that I was on the ball, not jerking off in the booth. He unholstered his side-arm and shot off a whole clip at the wreck (the first and only time he ever used the gun). Small bright splotches showed on the hull of the tank where the bullets ricocheted off and removed paint as they did so.

Cleavon returned to his booth seconds before a fireball rose in the dark behind him. At first he ducked, thinking that one of the wrecks in the moat had blown up, but when he looked backwards he saw a twisting tongue of fire rising many kilometres away. He sat in his chair and stared at the floor in stunned disbelief. Those attacking hovertanks had been embellished with the insignia of the Ashtabula Security Force, leased from the Fourth Armoured Division. Why would they carry out a suicidal assault like this?

8) Blackmail (and Strong Drink)

LONDON

JULY 10th

Alex drove from the motel back to work. Each night he'd slept over in a different hotel, paying cash instead of using a card, signing an illegible signature, avoiding people. Avoiding his flat, too, avoiding thinking about his predicament. It was a temporary measure and he knew it. As he slowed down for a red light an unregistered black saloon blocked him in front. Looking behind, he saw another unregistered black saloon blocking the rear; two people had left it and were casually walking towards him and when he looked to the front there were two people there as well. One pair went to the offside door, one pair to the nearside. Although they obviously represented authority, they politely knocked at the window.

He sighed and opened the door, prepared for the worst. In a strange way the politeness of these English felt far more unsettling than the treatment meted out to suspects back in Serbia - rough and uncompromising to the point of brutality.

'Mister Petrovic? Yes? Please leave your car, sir,' asked a nondescript person. There seemed to be a bulge under each armpit.

'Who are you?' asked Alex out of morbid curiosity, not really expecting an answer.

'Police, sir,' and all four produced coded hologram chips at the same instant in an incongruously comic manner. Alex peered. NEW NEW SCOTLAND YARD glimmered back at him, set deep in an intricate jewelled nest of ideograms. They were the real thing all over, this foursome; two metres tall, bland looks (surgery, perhaps?), sharp foxy eyes, deferential manners sugar-coating an undoubtedly hostile cast. One of them took his elbow in a grip just short of painful, urging him forward to a black saloon. Another policeman got into Alex's car.

'Am I under arrest?'

'Please get in the car, sir.'

'No, you are not under arrest, Mister Petrovic. We are acting on behalf of the Concordat.'

'Oh. And what does the Concordat want with me?'

'You are to be delivered to South London Sorting Office.'

Nothing else was said for the rest of the trip. Alex felt his heart alternately flit like a bird and thump like a hammer. He didn't feel comfortable about that title, "South London Sorting Office", and wondered just what it was.

It was a large modular warehouse, an accretion of geodesics only identified by a small and discreet plaque. Around about were other similar buildings, some empty, others being emptied or stocked. A lone figure waved cheerfully to them from an access hatch set in a truck-sized doorway in the Sorting Office wall, then came trotting over the concrete apron to meet them. Alex was forced out of the saloon, which then drove off at speed. None of the police even glanced back.

'Miserable long-faced lot, aren't they?' said the receptionist, and said it in Serbian. 'I'm Slobodan, by the way. Any questions? Well, of course you have. Come along and I'll answer them.' He looked good-natured, sharp-eyed and intelligent, almost like a fox rendered human.

Alex considered running away but the almost subconscious voice of caution warned him not to. Just as well, for Slobodan had instructions to get his client to the warehouse by any means possible; "alive" being the only constraint. This insistence was because the warehouse happened to be FedCon territory and they had full jurisprudence over any employee within it's bounds. Slobodan found that a friendly, curiosity-arousing approach worked best, especially if the escorts who delivered clients were a singularly humourless as those of New New Scotland Yard. He was, however, quite prepared to use threats of weapons or both if he had to.

'Where's my car! And what about work -'

'Don't fret so. The police have driven your car back to Badfort. They called your supervisor to say that you were called up to do jury service.'

Alex entered through the service hatch. Two very large people stepped in behind him: uniform-clad FAA police, implicitly forcing their escortee forward. One male, one female, both looking professionally unpleasant.

South London Sorting Office consisted of stacked offices constructed from modular sections. The small party entered one office which in fact led to a basement level. Alex led the way along a series of anonymous corridors until a sharp thrust from behind threw him headlong into a cramped cell. The door swung shut behind him and no lights followed. He panicked momentarily, then realised why: rotting straw. They made the place smell of rotting straw, just like that evil little oubliette in America. Before taking a step forward he waved both hands in front of him.

Nothing there. No trips or traps. However, since they had used smell, they ought to hit him with another type of sense assault.

They did. Sounds, pitched just below two hundred decibels, a mixture of hideous two kilohertz wailing and massively amplified gunshots. Then, just as he started to recover from that, they used -

Lights, actinic kliegs flashing stroboscopically at nearly seven times per second, bright enough to penetrate beneath the eyelids. Alex curled up and cowered, terrified of suffering an epileptic fit under these stimuli.

The sensory barrage continued for an almost unendurable, nerve-shredding time. Then - nothing.

Hidden in the cell was a speaker.

'Hello there!' came Slobodan' s voice. 'This, Alex, is an Eagle Two.'

Eagle Two. Shit, thought Alex, miserable and dejected, also disoriented. I'm being interrogated. Eagle Two meant they had already performed an Eagle Three - namely, covert observation of a subject, monitoring their activity, friends, relatives, background, finances. Eagle Two came next in the progression, the direct, confrontational interrogation of a suspect. These cell walls probably bulged with monitoring electronics.

'Please respond to the questions we ask you, Alex. This is your opportunity to clarify your position.' Translation: answer or suffer.

'Full name.'

'Alexander Dragan Petrovic.'

'Place of birth.'

'Sjenika, Serbia, Yugoslav Federal Republic.'

'Personnel number.'

'Can't remember.'

'Don't lie, Alex! Personnel number.'

'Ah - no, still can't remember.'

'Ho ho, most amusing. Why didn't you declare your earnings?'

'Earnings? Oh, earnings. Because I'd worked bloody hard for them, doing all the research and I wrote them before joining the Fed. You don't just throw away two years hard work for nothing.'

'Your address please.'

On and on and on went the session, for hours and hours. Gradually Alex calmed down, the raw fear that manifested itself earlier becoming an irritation at the bland questioning.

Just as surmised, each wall (also floor and ceiling) of his confinement room were full of eavesdropping equipment, subtle electronic sages constantly monitoring up to twenty-eight different parameters: galvanic skin response, pupil dilation, respiration rate, heart rate, vasodilation, horripilation and a host of other measures beyond the ability of all but a yogi to control. From a central processor the raw data passed to SLSO's resident psychologist, who came up with a rapid interpretation of the information, since a certain Mister Weiss of UNION was waiting for a definitive answer. At that moment one of UNION's agents watched the psychologist working, ready to take a reply and personal observation back to his superior.

'That's it, Mister Gelb. First run analysis complete. Want to hear it?'

'Condense it.'

'Ah. Okay. Our subject seems to possess a colossal guilt problem. Principally his guilt stems from the money he has, which appears rather meaningless to him. Not just the money but the things it also provides - nice car, holidays abroad, costly flat. This seems to derive from his experiences in Mexico. You will have noticed that he allocated, by covenant, had the money back to his family in Serbia. Now, if you want a punchline, what our subject is seeking, or has been seeking, in life is an epiphany. What he is looking for, though he may not have verbalised it quiet so, is some type of purging experience that would remove his guilt and make him believe that he was doing something of genuine worth. He looks back on his time in Mexico with mixed feelings, you see; it felt terrifying at the time but also vital. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he has a request in for transfer to DRA, to go to the Maghreb or back to Mexico.'

'Would he take our offer seriously?'

The psychologist laughed.

'He doesn't have much choice, does he? Sorry. Seriously - ah, well, it would jar his sensibilities to begin with. Make it an unpleasant initiation, though, and I guarantee he will pass it, to simultaneously defy you and redeem himself. There might be a problem, though.'

Gelb turned and looked enquiringly at his partner.

'As I said, Mexico made a profound impression on him. He saw death at close proximity and with regularity. From his admissions and from what I deduce he made a private agreement with himself never to kill anyone.'

Oh really, thought Gelb. The Eagle Three team didn't get quite that impression when they met Petrovic for the first time. He was going for a weapon in the kitchen, probably one of those fancy German mono-blade knives. Whatever, Weiss had instructed that Petrovic be inducted; if found passable he could be used, if not they could throw him to the wolves in some appropriate manner. And, contrary to public opinion, UNION did not exist solely to kill people.

'Ah. It is, perhaps, time to send in the shadow,' said the psychologist.

(SHADOW: "A dark image, an area of relative darkness, a threatening influence, a spectre, an inseparable companion, a person who trails another in secret, such as a detective")

Eventually Alex lost his temper at the questions and simply shouted curses in response to each new query. After being grumpy and angry then irritable and bored, Alex returned to the door of his cell.

Unlocked! They must be playing games with him. He carefully stepped out and breathed stale but clean air circulating around the nondescript corridors.

After appearing out of nowhere, the FAA police marched Alex though more corridors, seemingly at random until (surprise!) both escorts moved away at the entrance to yet another room. This one seemed relatively appealing, far more so than the last one, since it featured two reclining chairs, a small table, a person - male, late twenty-ish, wearing a wry smile and an earlink monitor. Upon the table sat a bottle and two glasses.

'Take a seat. I'm Milos, by the way. So we meet at long last, hey?'

Alex sat. Milos sat. Together they sat, in silence. Milos, however, was being supplied with information via the earlink about his assignee. He received a prompt.

'Do you want some slivovitz? Good stuff. One two zero per cent proof.'

Suspicion bloomed within Alex, the old ugly flower that impelled him to caution and care.

'What is it with UNION? Are you all Serbs? Oh - I get it. This is the pleasant side of my interrogation, isn't it. Pretty stupid of me not to realise.' He didn't drink anything.

Milos got a glass and absently clinked it against the bottle of spirits. Then he got another feed from the eavesdropping psychologist.

- be honest with him, tell him about Shadowing -

'I'll be honest with you. I'm a Shadow.'

For a shadow he looked curiously solid and three-dimensional.

'It's my job to study in detail any person who's under investigation, reading about them, studying them, trailing them. So I know all about you, though you don't know me at all. This meeting may change that.'

Alex remained silent and sullen.

'Now, you're bound to wonder what we're up to.'

- explain to him about shadows, explain that to him -

'As a shadow I can explain anything you want to know about my employers and your future employers.'

Alex reached for a glass at those words. A phrase of Neil's came back from their conversation back at his flat came back unbidden as his stomach clenched and his throat dried up: "You could offer to work for them."

'Future employers! Do you know something I don't?'

Milos smiled a knowing smile. No, make that an annoying, knowing smile.

'I promise to tell you the truth. UNION want you as an employee.'

Which happened to be what Alex didn't want to hear but expected anyway. Half expected. Internally he took stock: they might blackmail him into working for them but he'd never become one of them and he'd certainly not break his rule against taking life. The eavesdroppers and interpreters had doubtless learned that during the interrogation and could make of it whatever they wanted. Why would UNION want an unco-operative, unwilling Serb working for them? he asked himself, then answered his own question: all those contacts in Greece, people he knew, addresses, personal profiles, political sympathies, weaknesses, general assessment work he could carry out.

'I'd be useless.'

'Oh, I'm afraid not, Alex. You are actually a prime candidate for recruitment.'

'What! Oh, come on! Christ Risen, this gets worse. What do you mean?'

- stop smiling, he doesn't like it. Talk in a commiserative way, as if you're sorry for him -

'A prime candidate. Alex, what do you think UNION's most pressing problem is?'

'Not enough people to shoot?'

- ignore that and carry on -

'Actually it's their staff.'

Alex looked blank.

''They simply can't get enough staff of the right calibre. Those they get they can't retain. It's a perennial problem. Another?' he asked, referring to the bottle.

'Yes. Cheers.'

'So, a person such as yourself makes a good catch. To use the example of carrot and stick, they have a large blackmail stick to beat you over the head with just in case you're reluctant -'

- don't overdo it! -

'- with the carrot of being able to do what you really want to do, helping people directly instead of pushing a pen and shuffling papers. You already have experience of covert work in Greece, with a long list of contacts built up over the years.'

'Well, yes, but - I mean, the relatives are pretty distant ones. As for the local Greeks, they always kept a certain distance. Through fear, I think.' That was a lie, the Greeks he knew were friendly and outgoing and not suspicious in the least, and he didn't want to betray them just like that.

'Regardless, Mister Weiss would dearly like to get hold of that information. That's not all either. You're already a member of FedCon with eight years experience; you've worked in Mexico, Britain and Holland. Your personal assessment says you are, quote: Intelligent and able, well-motivated." So you see, you are quite a good catch.'

Alex glowered and made two little lines above his nose, wrinkling it as he sneered derisively, surprised as he was at such a positive assessment.

- alright, now the conscience salve -

There fell a pause before the conversation began again.

'When they induct you, Alex, they'll put you through something known as the Meatgrinder.'

- good, now you can lay it on -

'To be honest, Alex, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It's a ball-breaker, really.' And Milos wasn't exaggerating because he had been through the Meatgrinder himself and spoke with feeling and experience.

"Meatgrinder?" wondered Alex, what on earth is that? It doesn't sound like a party invitation.

'They put you through a six month course in six weeks, to see if you can stand the pressure. There are tests, practicals, assessments, all highly intensive. Creates very high levels of stress and it's really unpleasant. I know, I've done it.'

Milos tutted sympathetically and they both had another drink.

Bastards, thought Alex. They've left me with no alternative, have they. Go to White Hell in McMurdo Sound or pull years of screamtime down the Trench or - get minced.

'What would happen if I accepted ik. Ik? Sorry, accepted _it._ My tongue's not working properly.'

- this is it! We have got him just where we want him, in a corner. Right, tone down the consequences a little -

Milos slyly played on Alex's guilt and acquisitiveness, explaining that what he had at present he could keep but future royalties would be diverted to Finance with him only getting a percentage of his percentage. No more superlative income to cloud the conscience or the bank account. Although as a UNION probationer he would in fact earn almost twice his current salary …

(Not strictly true, as Alex later found out. He would need to work for two years with a flawless probationary year and a one hundred per cent second year credit to boost his salary by a hundred per cent. Nobody to date had managed such a feat and Alex didn't' break the duck either.)

Next day.

Alex woke up. Then he decided that waking up happened to be a bad idea. Waking up meant feeling dire. Clearly Sobr-Ups had a low level of efficiency when deployed against half bottles of imported slivovitz. Not only that but the resultant chemical cocktail made him feel ill.

In flashes the previous day's travail came back to him: detention, interrogation, drinking. But not working.

Christ Risen! Ten past twelve noon - no, no that must be wrong.

No.

Ten past twelve. Ten minutes beyond the last clocking-in time at work and even if he drove full speed (assuming nil time to depil, dress, wash, eat, depart) in a traffic-free metropolis he would still be at least thirty minutes late. Christ Risen, what could go wrong next! Arrested, detained, now late for work. All this flashed in another sequence in Alex's mind, in mental fifth gear. He hurled the duvet back and dropped both legs to the floor.

Piezo-electric crystals cleverly connected and the wall-screen television came on, too loud.

'Good morning Alex!' boomed the speakers.

Alex, rubbing his hair and stretching, paused in surprise. It couldn't be a personalised broadcast, they were illegal and no station dared broadcast them, hadn't done for years - or was that only in Europe?

'Hello hello! You must be wondering about work, well no real need to. You're on indefinite leave. All has been taken care of.'

Oh well, the late start was resolved anyway.

Obviously persons unknown had thoughtfully made up a video disk with the visual code deleted and inserted it in the player, all ready for Mister Petrovic and his surfacing in the morning. They pulled official strings to arrange for indefinite leave, returned him to his room whilst still inebriated (not a condition he normally suffered from so there may have been more than vodka in that bottle of Milos'). He dressed, walked sombrely to the main room and found various miscellania deposited on the coffee table. A new copy of the Manual of Personnel Operations (boring centimetre-thick tome), a newly-typed sheet of print that appeared to be a contract, a small imitation-leather cachet. Alex picked up the last-named first.

That disk still rattled on in the background.

' - you will have to make your own arrangements for travel to Amberland. Arrival time is between nineteen to twenty-two hundred on the eighteenth of this month. If you are so much as a minute late you will not get it. The entry code will be after the beep and PAY ATTENTION! Because this whole vid is a self-eraser one-play'

"beep" went the disk, then "one three five seven six one". Alex bit his cheek and frantically looked for an EMO or Greenscreen, found one and whilst reciting the numbers to himself typed them in.

What lay in the cachet? He held it along each edge and pressed, making the little pouch gape into a mouth; tilting and shaking made a small piece of plastic fall out. It was electric green and of a size to fit into the palm; it came wrapped in a heat- and pressure-proof plastic shield with Day-Glo instructions attached.

1) OPEN IN PRIVATE

2) FOR FUTURE POSITIVE VERIFICATION:

A) PLACE TWO DIGITS UPON MEMORY STRIP AND RETAIN THERE FOR TWO SECONDS.

B) DO NOT DIVULGE DETAILS OF DIGITS USED.

3) ENTER VIA PERSONAL TACT SECONDARY CODE APPENDED.

4) DESTROY SECONDARY CODE

5) DESTROY THESE INSTRUCTIONS

IMPORTANT! THIS CARD IS THE PROPERTY OF FEDCON. IT CAN BE RECALLED AT ANY TIME. KEEP IT SAFE. YOU WILL BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR IT'S LOSS

Alex stuck the various laminae in a pocket and went about eating some crispbread, periodically dipping it in mock-yoghurt and trying not to drop crumbs. He took a long slow look around him, making an assay of the room. The draft that included himself would be accommodated at Amberland for their training, so he wouldn't have the benefit of all his paraphernalia. No more messages to El Quatro. UNION had already removed his optical laser, anyway. He felt half-excited, half-scared and half-angry, one hundred and fifty per cent alive. It was strange, strange, strange; about to surrender his freedom and future financial security yet he truly felt more euphoric than he had for years. Off to do battle with the System Runners, Authority, Wire Puller (it helped, really, to personalise the struggle as against people instead of a training program). Possibly removing the guilty secret that he'd ferried around inside for years helped his conscience, too.

Looking round the room, seeing it through eyes opened by honesty, he saw it as it really was, a softer type of prison; one where you locked yourself in, against the outside world. All communications sanctioned and censored, no contact with other people - he'd be better off in an antique hole like the one Neil lurked in.


	5. Chapter 5

9) Ground Meat

AMBERLANDS

HEREFORDSHIRE

Six weeks condensed into snapshots, all that Alex really wanted to remember about the Meatgrinder course, which felt every bit as unpleasant as Milos' hinted at:

EXAM PAPER ONE:

Question one (Compulsory) Out line the sequence of events from 1997 to 2009 (inclusive) that led to the destruction of the previous political order in the USA; include a description of how these events were to affect general European and later world history.

'I will not handle a gun.'

'You bloody well will, little man.'

'I won't. I'm not in the Army and you can't make me.'

'You don't have a choice here.'

'I won't handle a gun.'

'You don't pass the Handgun course then you fail overall, little man.'

'I won't shoot people.'

'I'm not bloody asking you to! It's just a target in there. Now pick up the gun.'

EXAM PAPER TWO

Question two (Compulsory) Given a Lascelle constant of 0.53, use the table of indices to determine the degree of cultural compatibility between the following: I) a minor Muslim oil state and a major Muslim military state; ii) the United States and Armenia; iii) Norway and Taiwan; iv) A Northern hemisphere island state and a Southern hemisphere island state.

"In the Field Training Exercise you will be flown, blindfold, to a drop-off point at least fifty kilometres away. Your mission is then to make your way back here, within twelve hours. The police have been told about you and will therefore be trying to apprehend you. Capture means failure. Turning up after twelve hours means failure. That's all. I'd like to wish you good luck but can't because we need to fail some of you. Quotas and all that. Off you go now.'

EXAM PAPER THREE

Question 1) (Compulsory) Develop and prove, after Cattell, a dynamic model of politico-historical covalent evolution, with regard to the Indian sub-continent. You MUST include and explain: I) Moghul domination ii) European penetration iii) English domination iv) Partition v0 Religious division (contemporary) vi) Economic division (historical).

"You will find various objects in front of you. Some are of potential use, others are not. Make your selection. You will have forty-five seconds to open the lock in front of you when I stop talking. Go!"

EXAM PAPER FOUR

Question 1) (Compulsory) Use the Revell method to decrypt this input: 11100 10 1001 0110100 101 1 1 1001 110 101 011 101001 101 10110 101 10110 1 10 1 1010101 11001 1011 1 1 101 01 10

"Right. Of the twenty originals there are twelve of you left. Congratulations. From here it gets harder. Oh, you can laugh, but I'm telling the truth. You've now got to put into practice the basic lesson you've learnt, which is a lot harder than it sounds, believe me. What you will be don't is acting as observers in an exercise conducted by UNION staff. You will be assessed according to results. I notice you're not laughing now!"

PRO FORMA:

DEAR:_ Mr Petrovic_

YOU HAVE FORMALLY PASSED THE ENTRY PROCEDURE UNDERTAKEN AT AMBERLAND. YOU HAVE NOW FORMALLY BEEN INDUCTED INTO THE UNION ARM OF THE FEDERATED CONCORDAT. AS A RESULT OF THIS YOU ARE ALLLOWED ONE WEEK PRE-COMMENCEMENT LEAVE. AFTER THIS TIME HAS ELAPSED YOU WILL PRESENT YOURSELF TO THE ADDRESS OVERLEAF. YOUR COVER IDENTITY HAS BEEN PREPARED AND WILL BE FORWARDED TO YOU WITHIN FORTY EIGHT HOURS. FOR THE TIME BEING YOU WILL MAINTAIN THAT YOU ARE BEING GIVEN A PUNITIVE TRANSFER TO MJO AT SOUTH LONDON SORTING OFFICE

Alex slept for almost twenty-four hours, as the backlog of adrenaline withdrawal, mental and physical taxation, anxiety and excitement all claimed him.

When waking a stream of hypnagogic images ran themselves past his inner eye. He twisted comfortably underneath the duvet, feeling an absence, an element missing.

Work! That was it, he missed work and the comfortable, boring routine it brought. That had been replaced by the insecurity of UNION and the excitement (or promise) of a job that did not consists of endless pen-pushing.

10) Low Times

HOLDING CELL 101

POLIZEI PLATZ OST

HAMBURG

OCTOBER

In an exchange agreement, the German Bundespolizei took into custody persons remanded for appearance in the civil or criminal courts when these persons were members of the Federated Concordat. This came about due to limited detention space available to the FedCon in Germany; it also made remand less arbitrary. The Bundespolizei were amenable about the arrangement since there existed a considerable financial incentive and they could 'maximise' prison space by filling those cells empty of DUR citizens.

This, then, was the reason for Lothar being incarcerated in the cells in Hamburg. He'd been separated from Peiter, cuffed, jacketed, yoked and stuck into a police people-wagon. He shared the space with six other unfortunates; a couple of drunks who still flared up at each other, a druggie, two Pax activists with scalp wounds that bled messily over the seats and lastly an obese, unshaven man who bleated continually about not meaning to hit his wife, not this time anyway. Lothar sullenly surveyed them all, cursing silently that either he or Peiter ever listened to that woman and her suggestions. Silently cursed, because the cops had a nasty habit of recording everything you said and using it out of context in prosecutions.

After an interminable journey, swaying uncomfortably in darkness, all seven occupants of the "happy-cart" fell over as it braked. The rear door swung open and all seven were manhandled out; sleazy neon lights overhead showed an anonymous entrance door, outside of which stood a plain-clothes detective and two uniformed cops, both of whom cradled shock-sticks.

For a minute Lothar felt he ought to try the plea he made earlier in an unsuccessful attempt to get away from the legal clutches of FedCon; he had plaintively stated that he wasn't "one of them", couldn't the nice police arrest him and forget about FedCon? To which the answer had been no, he'd been caught on FedCon turf so they could do pretty much what they wanted with him.

'Inside, you lot. Stand in the entrance hall. No, not you,' said the detective, holding back the wife-hitter. The others filed in and Lothar could hear one of the uniformed cops speaking; '… lesson for you. Like to hit women, do you?' and then came the static thud of shock-sticks for aching seconds. Those things hurt, too, really hurt in the hands of anyone adept in their use. The three cops reappeared with their twitching, spasming prisoner.

One of the trio winked at Lothar.

'Resisting arrest,' he said.

They took Lothar down to an old, well-used cell with harsh lights, a stinking toilet and a rigid bed. Mutant hissing came from a decrepit wall-speaker, it's armour grille devoid of paint after years of futile, vengeful attacks.

Bad though it undoubtedly was, Lothar had seen worse as a youthful soccer hooligan when he'd briefly witnessed the splendours of a Polish jail from the inside.

He sat down.

'Prisoner blah blah blah seventy-nine,' droned the wall-speaker in unintelligible tones. 'You are being detained under Protocol Eighty of the Concordat's Judicial Proposal. You are to be detained in this … ahem, no sugar … this facility until a representative of the Concordat arrives to take custody of you.'

His heart nearly stopped. The Fed! Jesus Christ Almighty, not them again. He'd imagined that he had slipped from their notice. Although all holding cells were soundproofed, years of hard use resulted in a deterioration in their anechoic quality. So police walking up and down the corridor outside 101 heard a dim, forlorn wailing coming from the cell.

Lothar was screaming.

'Newsflash! This just in: terrorist saboteurs of the Northern Anarchist Coalition have claimed responsibility in destroying the aircraft carrying members of the Dutch royal family as it returned from an official engagement to Greenland. At least ten members of the family are missing, presumed dead. More details in the hourly bulletin -'

The FedCon psychologist snapped his fingers and the news channel abruptly and obediently choked itself off. He wasn't a monarchist, not at all. What about the crew on that plane; didn't they deserve a passing mention? A few royal parasites less wouldn't harm the world but their underlings ought to at least get a mention.

Anyway, news of disasters with aircraft reminded him of his subject, Mister Lothar Hellman. Signs of severe trauma there, made worse by incarceration and years of past drug abuse. So; why the state of utter panic whenever he came into contact with the friendly Fed? It could be, of course, that Mister Hellman killed his companion Theo and then constructed a fabulation to salve his conscience and ease the memory.

He sighed. Time, in a matter of doubt, to turn to the Oracle. This particular oracle happened to be an Omax 1500, state-of-the-art German technology, with a Russian Ouspensky software package, at least 10,000 case histories indexed and cross-referenced and using this a puzzled mind-mapper could find answers to most questions.

Not all answers to all questions. Perhaps guidelines defined it better. They ought to be guidelines, thought the psychologist, because Mister Hellman's symptoms certainly didn't fit into typical case profiles.

11) Of Rats and Rain

SEPTEMBER

THE WARRENS

SHEFFIELD

Being a probationer, Alex needed to serve for the full duration of an operation, under an experienced eye. There didn't appear to be any criteria about what kind of operation probationers got assigned to. Police, traffic, Customs Control, FedCon or any other entity. In recognition of his past sins, Alex found himself in one of the less salubrious zones: The Warrens, in Sheffield.

The housing projects of the 1960's and the past century had long outlasted their useful life, rotting away from within as vermin and environment gnawed away at them. They had been demolished in the Civic Initiative Action of the early twenty-first century, the vacant ground then being allocated to various local projects before the Accelerated Housing Program began building. AHP was intended to provide relatively low-cost, relatively high-quality accommodation; the deck access design should have lasted for fifty years with a safety factor of fifty per cent. Now, however, they were old before their time. Patched-up, frangible, subject to a hundred forms of fabric fatigue, they now existed to house the underclass who moved into what became known as "The Warrens".

They were not unique to any one city; Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, London, all had areas of urban blight where crime and poverty were endemic, either as cause or effect or both.

Alex, as part of an ongoing police monitoring operation, run locally, came to replace a FedCon liaison officer who wanted to go on holiday (some holiday, in Alex's opinion - a month on the moon!).

Yorkshire people spoke oddly, to Alex, long used to the tones of the Home Counties. Yorkshire people spoke with a thick accent, strange dialect, slang that didn't seem English. The Sheffield sense of humour was unusual, too; dry and cutting. Like a saw.

The police made an effort to look after Alex when he arrived, bunking him down in their private quarters and giving him all sorts of goodies - periodicals, reference works, anachronistic 2-D pictures of pre-CIA Sheffield, glossaries and annotated reports. They wanted him to be well informed. Incidentally, the sheer amount of information Alex would have to ingest meant he would have to be intellectually able in addition to being physically capable. They also wished him to be adept at social monitoring, so they partnered him with an experience officer as an instructor and guide. From on high came an order to carefully monitor the monitor, as a favour to FedCon, a favour that could be traded in future for a return favour (such as access to Internal Net, FIDO or even PolSat). They didn't want their assignee to come to harm, so he got an anti-harm suit; they wanted him to harm others if necessary, so they gave him a gun (which he never removed from his station locker).

'That,' said Sergeant Barnes, 'is a drop.'

Alex glanced from the corner of his eye at the police officer. Of course it was a drop. Any sheer fall of over thirty metres could be called "a drop".

The pair were at mid-point of a walkway between two tenement blocks on the outskirts of The Warrens, where things got bad but not too bad, certainly not too bad for an assigned monitor. Merely murders, assaults, spectra of drugs offences, robbery, vandalism, plus innumerable other crimes.

'Oi, Sarge, fuck off and die you fucker!' chorused a flock of children no older than five, running past them. Barnes ignored them, so Alex ignored them too.

'Just playing,' explained Sergeant Barnes. ' When things are bad they throw poison darts.'

Oh great, thought Alex, no stones, just a curare cocktail on a spike. Don't let things get bad while I'm here!

The escorting policeman, noticing his charges scepticism, turned to explain: when the weather became hot, tempers ran ragged and the sporadic viciousness of daily life became pandemic. When the weather was cold or wet or both simultaneously it became much easier.

To return to the drop: it acted as the temporary deposit for illegal pharmaceuticals, left by a courier for another courier to collect. And why there? Because at the junction of two pre-fabricated slabs a small nick had been made, allowing a fine wire to dangle over the side from a little retaining toggle, at the end of which a small bag could be hung. Ergo, a drop. This time, nothing there.

On they went. People walking past stopped talking to stare sullenly at them, creating an unpleasant feeling that reminded Alex of his time in Kosovo. Sergeant Barnes was able to point out a lot of the onlookers with a précis of their involvement with the forces of the law: that was Irwin Moore, brother of Karl, who was currently doing seven years penal servitude in Wandsworth; she was Lisa Nixon, suspected of carrying for the Bacon brothers; that was Jolly James, no fixed abode, chronic alcoholic and petty thief; that was Peter Morrisey, out on bail for car theft (sixth time); Claire Heaney, who had beaten him over the head with a spike shoe end and who frequently did the same with her children; Simon Clarke, suspected of carrying and of killing ("no proof yet but we're working on it").

A whole compendium of offences. There was also a confounding factor present; when criminals went out for their constitutionals, non-criminals went indoors and stayed there, so an uninitiated onlooker may have gained a rather biased perception.

Barnes pointed out a thin wire strung between two tenement decks, easily a hundred metres from block to block.

'See that? Pirate radio antenna. The kids club together for the hardware, then they hire William Tell. He puts up the aerial and they broadcast until the BPI comes along and does them.'

"William Tell", it transpired, was a local with a crossbow, who could shoot a wire connected to a bolt across the gaps between buildings and thus create an aerial. Never arrested, he remained only a nick-name. The police didn't worry much; broadcasting kept a certain fraction of the local youth occupied, away from more nefarious pursuits. Pirate radio stations were like weeds anyway, get rid of one and another two sprang up to fill the airwave gap.

They descended a stairway, sixteen flights with refuse heaped rotting in every stairwell, because the refuse chutes broke years ago and the council collection service was erratic. Once at the bottom they walked out into the open, away from the sides of the tenement blocks. The tip was, either stay under the walkway or keep well clear of it, because if you were only a few metres of it horizontally then a large and heavy object might be propelled over the balcony to descend on your head. Like a wardrobe. Or a concrete paving slab.

Alex looked around and about, up and down, not only looking but seeing. In a pressure-cooker estate like this all you could do was expect the worst from people and be surprised if they didn't all turn out so. Barnes confirmed these unspoken thoughts by pointing out a few locals who were criminals, the offspring of criminals who were themselves the offspring of criminals. People like them never reformed; perpetual recidivists, they only persisted in what they saw as normal behaviour.

The twosome paused. On either side rose the tenements, great artificial cliffs stained with ancient bird droppings, where graffiti had been chiselled into the walls with power drills. Voices called like lost birds between the cliff faces as neighbours called to each other, no words distinguishable, just tones. The duo detoured into a vast recess in Block Fifteen, even danker and gloomier than the rest of the block, an access and service point for the ventilation and air conditioning ducts. Giant corroded pipes ran the width of the recess (ten metres or so in breadth), kinked and knuckled to allow council engineers access, not that they actually ever came any more.

The reason they detoured was so Sergeant Barnes could light up; not illegal or contra-regulations but it made him more human to any observers and he didn't want that.

Alex sat atop a pipe while Barnes smoked.

'I wouldn't do that,' said the policeman, amused.

'Oh. Why not?'

'Because there's some right queer creatures living in those ducts. Cockroaches and the like.'

"Cockroach" did it. Alex leapt down, his bottom tingling with alarm. To him, "cockroach" meant the Balkan variety, a monster that hissed, bit and flew with equal facility. Many families in Eastern Europe kept a trained pet rat to deal with them. Th Greater London Cockroach didn't measure up to it's cousin but it remained a nasty little beast. All the tenement blocks were infested with them. Also, there were winged ants, a thing called a silverfish totally unknown to Alex, plus earwigs, beetles and wasps.

'Why can't they get rid of them?' asked the tourist.

Ah, explained Barnes. To get rid meant having to fumigate, and to fumigate properly the interstices of the whole block needed to be gassed, a major operation that council purse-strings limited to an annual event. Even then, the target vermin over generations had developed a tolerance to chemical agents and many survived the gas attack. Within a month there would be as many little guests in residence in each household as there had been pre-operation.

'What we could do with, really, is a terrier bred down to about four or five inches long. You don't acquire tolerance to a bloody Jack Russell!'

"Terrier", "inches" and "Jack Russell" were unfamiliar to the Serb but he followed his companions line of thought anyway.

'What you need is a trained rat.'

'Pardon! A trained rat!'

'Yes. I am surprised you never heard of them. We used to keep one at home for the Brontejowa - uh, that is, the cockroaches. Lots of people do. They eat them right up. These blocks could do with a whole pack of them.'

Barnes nodded slowly and thoughtfully.

'You have an idea there.' A note went into his personal greenscreen and the two carried on. Once out of the tenement's shadow bright sunlight warmed their spirits and bodies the instant the sun came out from behind the clouds.

Every five minutes they needed to check in with Despatch Control to prove they were still alive and unharmed by giving their names and numbers. This acted almost like a barometer of how tense the Warrens were; if times between the checks were twenty minutes you could guarantee it was a cold, wet, miserable day with all the wrongdoers sensibly indoors; when the check-ins sidled down to forty-five seconds a mob riot would be imminent, guns and beer bottles full of home-made napalm. Five minutes could be described as the tense side of normal.

They warmed up for a few minutes. Barnes called in. Despatch spoke back to him in their impenetrable crackle-and-hiss, from which Alex could discern absolutely nothing. Perhaps a few years of duty in the Warrens listening to urgent chatter filtered through a handset of dubious quality enhanced hearing.

Their next route led into the very heart (still, not beating) of the Warrens; a square mile in the English measure, consisting of scrubby grass patches and dirt where a set of playing fields once existed.

'Odd,' commented Barnes, not explaining why. He called up Despatch Control. Alex took a good look around and saw nothing pleasant yet nothing out of place. There were grimy tenements on all sides, spotted with mould and rust; an ancient rusted relic (once a car) lay not far away, dead for years and rusting into obscurity; at dead centre of the barren grass stood a collection of pre-fab huts slotted together in the fashion of a child's building kit, surrounded by a high fence.

'I take it that we are going there?'

Barnes said nothing, just gradually increased his pace so his partner found that he had to make longer strides to keep up. Alex wondered what the game was. There didn't seem to be anyone around to threaten them.

In fact, as the staff at the station informed him later, the apparent absence of people gave cause for concern to any experienced watcher. Normally, as far as things around the Warrens ever approached normal, hordes of children played football on the Wreck, as the bare land was known; older children drove bikes across it, chased each other across it and watched adults trek across it to the police station to make out complaints, fulfil bail conditions, keep probation appointments.

Yet now there were no people present at all.

So why are we one notch short of running? Wondered Alex again. While they jogged on, Barnes threw quick glances from side to side, rapid cautious looks that made Alex peer closely in the direction of his associate's gaze. All around, the tenements seemed empty, but in the ground level garages - weren't those things moving in a few of them? People, maybe. Staying-out-of-sight people, people Plotting Unpleasant Things, maybe.

In front of them lay the pre-fab police station, surrounded by a three-metre fence topped by rusty razor wire. A thoughtful person already held the gate open in readiness for them and stood holding the gate and a four-kilo padlock, ready to shut it all up again. They beckoned urgently in a come-here gesture.

'Run!' they shouted.

Alex perversely looked to see what they would be running from, since he already knew where he'd be running to. He saw a mob of youths. Footballs and frisbees were gone, replaced by knives and nailed clubs. Clearly these sportsmen were now playing a different game today: Hunt the Policeman.Both policeman and probationer raced the last fifty metres like rabbits, into the palisaded station, hearing with mutual mixed feelings the gate rolling shut behind them. True, they were in and safe but they were also stuck in the station. They would have to wait until the helicopter arrived with canisters of pepper gas and aerosol anaesthetic. An unpleasant way to spend the weekend. Alex waited in the canteen, expecting gangs of riot police to arrive, coerce him into donning protective gear and make sorties against the assembled youngsters thirsting for blood and action outside. Shit, it felt as bad as conscription again. That itself had been abysmally awful, two years sitting in barracks being shouted at by loud-mouthed morons in uniform, with periods of standing on street corners armed with batons and shields: "Duties in Support of the State".

'What we really need,' said Barnes, ' is a spell of bad weather. 'Just our luck we've got an Indian summer. No chance of what we want.'

'Summer Indian?' asked Alex, unfamiliar with the idiom.

12) 

HAMBURG

MEDICAL ANNEXE

POLIZEI PLAZA OST

Once again the FedCon psychologist dropped himself into an over-stuffed armchair, but since the last time he had learnt to put a cover on his coffee cup. No spillage.

'Hello there,' said the other staffroom resident, a doctor. 'Tough morning, hmm?'

'Ja - sorry, yes, yes it has been,' replied the psychologist , reverting to his native Dutch for a second. 'I am getting nowhere with Subject Hellman. Very odd, very strange.'

The other man became professionally curious.

'Oh yes? The one I tested samples for -'

The Dutchman looked chidingly at his companion.

'Ethics, ethics…'

'Sorry. Hmm. Well, whoever I did those tests for had ingested one hell of a lot of drugs in the past. You should have seen the spectrograph - came out like a reference chart of illegal drugs.'

'But nothing chemically appropriate, really.'

'What do you mean by that?'

Careful not to mention names, the psychologist explained that the subject in question -

'Oh, damn it,' he grumbled, ' enough of this silly behaviour. Here's a transcript.'

WHAT FOLLOWS IS A VERBATIM ACCOUNT AS GIVEN BY THE UNDERSIGNED, GIVEN FREELY AND WITHOUT DURESS. THIS TRANSCRIPT IS DERIVED FROM TAPE RECORDS OF 21ST INST.

_SUBJECT:_ Is it on? Yeah? Oh, right. Uh, my name is - what? Oh. Yeah, okay, I'll remember. No name. Um. It was back in the summer, beginning of June I think, the seventh or eighth. No, it was the eighth. I remember now, we - Theo and me, that's who I mean - oh shit should I have said his name? Well anyway we were doing a tour in Germany. No, no, a tour is when you do courier work for drug gangs, you know, carrying for them. you go from one place to another and they give you a per centage. Anyway we were down near Munich, a place called Bergen near an airstrip. Ah, we were sleeping rough in a wood, after we'd been dropping acid and tripping. It was good because you could lie on your back and watch the jets coming in to land and take off. Ah - yeah, well like I said we used to watch the jets coming down or going up. Then we heard this one coming in low, but it wasn't making the right noise, like the engines had failed, yeah? It was like a whistling - I know, like those dive-bombers you see in old war films. Theo and me both got up to see what was going on with it and this jet just went smack! Right into the fucking ground, blew itself to bits. Loads of bits, they were all flying all over the place. I ducked but Theo just stood there staring. Then he, uh, what was it - oh yeah he said - ah! - well he said to me "It's absolutely un-fucking-believable, it's not blown up any more." That's pretty much what he said.

SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 10 SECONDS

Can I have a glass of water? Nothing stronger? Just a thought. Right, well, okay, I looked up where Theo was pointing and this jet that had exploded was putting itself back together. No lie, I swear. All the bits sort of floated back together and they weren't burnt of twisted or anything. When it stopped it looked like it never crashed at all. It just sat there in a crater all of its own.

SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 30 SECONDS

Ah, Theo and me looked at each other at the same time and I could tell he was thinking what I was thinking as well - are we tripping out or what! So I said "did you see that crashed jet go back together again" and he said "yes" so I knew it couldn't be a hallucination because we both saw the same thing at the same time. Well, Theo decided to go and see what this thing was, so he walked out of the wood. And then this guy got out of the cockpit and climbed down. The pilot. Surprised me to see that, somehow I didn't think there'd be anyone in the jet. He was poking around the wheels - it had it's wheels down you see - and he had his back to us so he didn't see Theo coming at him. Me, I didn't want to have anything to do with it, it gave me a weird feeling, fucking gooseflesh, right? I mean, I've seen strange things before but this - I don't know, it felt wrong, sort of. You don't expect to see things like that when you're straight, man. Suddenly this guy heard Theo, who was about ten metres away and he turns round and shoots him. Just like that. Bang. Then he looked around and kept on shooting because he didn't see any witnesses. That did it for me, I legged it out of there. I don't mind telling you I was just about crapping myself before that psycho got out of his fucking death-jet. Shooting Theo, I couldn't take that. It felt like being in the middle of the worst trip ever except it was real life. So I got as far from Munich as fast as I could and ever since then I've tried to keep well clear of the Fed. It was a FedCon jet, you see, with that great big sign of theirs on the side. I never trusted them before and now …

DEBRIEFER: Did the jet crash? Maybe you hallucinated it.

SUBJECT: It left a fucking great crater! Of course it crashed! I know the difference between real life and imagination and being on a trip. And he killed Theo - d'you think I imagined that? No way. It's no wonder I kept well away from you lot, is it! That bitch in Hamburg dropped us right in it, I'd never have gone near that warehouse if I'd known it was FedCon. Is there any chance of being sent back to the police?

SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 2 MINUTES

SUBJECT: That's it. That's all. You want me to take the lie test, I will. But there's something fucking weird going on in the world if things like that go on. You get me?

END END END

After his companion finished reading the psychologist took back the transcript and shrugged.

'We gave him the Taunus test and guess what? He passed. So he believes what he told us, at the least.'

'What do you think happened?'

'Ah! Good question. Along the lines of: subject Lothar being on a drug trip, murders his friend and subsequently forms a confabulation to avoid confronting it.'

There were holes large enough to drive a truck through in that theory, however.

13) Small Needle, Large Haystack

SOUTH LONDON SORTING OFFICE

SPETEMBER

Alex ended up being escorted through the underground tunnels again. This time it came about because he had no idea of how to get to the debriefing room, and this time he had only one escort who behaved in a relatively deferential manner. Alas, this time there was no slivovitz bottle; the room used was an improvement on Milos' cubby-hole, being a bland office suite like a million others Alex had seen or moved through. The presence of a gun rack on a wall spoiled the nature of the illusion. He stared distrustfully, first at the weapons, then at - surprise surprise - Milos, who greeted him with a sneeze.

'Good day. Sit, sit. Excuse my cold. Don't come too close.'

'Is this another disorientation exercise?'

'No. No, you passed your trial by fire and I'm here to give you an assignment. What do you think of that?'

Very little, really, said Alex to himself.

'Ah, very good. What am I doing, counting cars on a city-centre by-pass? Census checks? Helping old people to cross the road?'

If the psychologist had been listening, he could have told Milos to pile on the consequences of assignment.

'You're being sent in at what they call the deep end. Take this, it's your document wallet. Full instructions are inside, but if you want a précis … Okay. You will be official UNION second-line members accompanying the DRU police, since the Fed have been implicated in a possible crime, at the FedCon Research Germany facility. Near Bergen, if you know it. Your documents and disks state that you are working for the Mandated Judicial Overview so kindly bear that in mind. You are not a spy or a secret agent or a superman, you're an MJO member of the Fed. Behave accordingly. And before you leave, make out a shortlist of all your contacts in Greece. Names, addresses, occupations, relatives, the lot, okay?'

Such a request did not come unexpectedly but the timing did. Alex fondly imagined that he would be given time to sit down and discuss exactly who he ought to include and who he ought to leave out. Now he was told flatly to include everyone he ever met in Greece, which came to a suprisingly small number when totalled up.

Milos sneezed again, looking sourly at Alex, who slowly wrote names on a greenscreen, pausing every few seconds to pensively suck his cheek. When he finished, the other leaned forward.

'Yes?' asked Alex, expecting either a question or a statement.

'When you were trapped inside the police fort, in Sheffield, was it your idea about the rain?'

In fact it had been Sergeant Barnes who stated that "rain was the best policeman" and the sentiment appealed to him so much that Alex found a quiet corner, used UNION priority codes and his TACT and put through a request to Logistics -

- who came up with the goods an hour later with a cloud-seeder laying and spraying halogen crystals to the north of Sheffield, up-wind in a complicated dispersal pattern. Within another hour the downpour began. Slowly the besiegers dispersed, wet and depressed after a long wait to see if the clouds would disappear. Amongst the mob numbers had been a conscientious shadow, keeping an eye on his charge, which was how he came to be suffering from a cold.

Net result: nobody hurt, siege ended, a new (but expensive) method of crowd control instigated. And Alex was able to depart without having to don riot gear or baton charge hordes of youths, which he felt justifiably smug about. As for the initiative shown, Milos report, the cloud-seeder log and Sheffield police reports all went into UNION files via one route or another, passing through electronic filters until they reached a storage bin: notice had been taken.

'Now,' said Milos. 'You weapon issue. I believe you have a problem of some kind with this?'

Which happened to be quite wide of the truth, since Milos knew from exhaustive study that Alex detested guns.

'Well,' he continued, 'I'm afraid it's in the Contract, which you signed. All UNION members to carry a weapon for self-defence.' He gestured to the wall rack that housed a variety of hand-held weapons, both lethal and non-lethal. 'The only thing they don't do is specify what you choose.'

Alex felt uncomfortable. The temptation, of course, was to grab the nearest device and leave, but a shrill non-verbal alarm told him not to.

Eventually he selected a silvery, pencil-sized tube with a tapered end and on-off switch, very plain and functional compared to some of the high-tec cannons on display.

'That!' exclaimed Milos. 'Oh, well.' "That" referred to Alex's weapon, a Zap Gun, an electrical discharge side-arm that incapacitated in a non-fatal manner, just so long as the target wasn't too old or too young or too ill or the possessor of a cardiac condition. Zap Guns had been fashionable a decade ago, until people discovered how short a range they had, five metres on a good day being their absolute limit. Nor were they terribly accurate.

'When do I go to Germany?'

Milos checked his wristwatch.

'Not long. About twenty minutes.'

Alex looked up suddenly from signing his Receipt of Ordnance Issued form. _How_ long?

'Did you say twenty -'

'Yes.'

A whole train of thoughts ran through Alex's mind and into each other. Twenty minutes? What about his flat? And the car? Come to that, what about tickets? And he didn't speak German, either. Visas? Currency? If he was on the UNION payroll when did his account get a credit? Would it still be the end of the month? Wait!

He hadn't reckoned on the power of the Green Card and it's motile coded hologram. A flunkey presented him with one of his own suitcases packed with a sensible assortment of clothing and accoutrements; the same flunkey assured him that the flat was secure ("and by now probably bugged as well" added Alex to himself), the car parked and yes, his wages would be paid in at the end of the month. Also with the documents presented by Milos there happened to be a one year déclassé passport and a German credit card. The passport he would keep, the credit card to be returned on completion of the mission. Although not informed of it, he guessed that a close eye would be kept on the card's usage and any abuse would mean curtailment, or punishment and since he was now in UNION the punishment would probably be pretty severe

'Yes, very efficient but I still don't speak German,' he lamented to a flunkey, Milos and an escort when all four moved along the trackless corridors.

'Take this TACT that I just happen to have for issue to you, there's a translation channel on it somewhere. Anyway, they all speak English, don't they?'

Outside South London's geodesic sprawl stood a Logistics utility car with a bored driver at the wheel. Alex climbed up to the cab alongside the driver. They both looked at each other for a long second.

'Stansted. Terminal Three please.'

The driver idly selected a gear and turned the car around in it's own length.

'Short stay? Long stay? Overnight?' she asked.

'Short stay,' replied Alex. Very short stay, he felt like adding.

Whilst they motored on he broke the seal on his document package. As yet he didn't know anything about his flight - which carrier, which gate it left from, which German airport would be the destination nor how long it would take to get there. There were no tickets enclosed in the package so by deduction the carrier would be from Logistics.

This is all a bit of a mess, he mused. At least when I fly to Greece I have enough time to prepare for it. Maybe they threw me in to see how I coped with it. Maybe, maybe, maybe; perhaps their interest is in my reactions and not how well I carry out the task. Shit! How paranoid can you get! Neil would love this, wouldn't he, and what was the name of that woman he said fancied me? Damn, I can't remember her name; she ought to get a telling-off for sticking a name and address in my pocket. Oh! That's right, I could ask to see that - or will it be restricted access because it's evidence?

'Terminal Three, Short Stay. Have a good one, friend.'

The instant he departed the car, a stewardess in a micro-dress appeared. She looked alien; plastic surgery had rendered her face perfectly symmetrical and she wore the latest fad in opaque make up.

'Mister Petrovic of the Judicial Overview? Pleased to meet you, please follow me. We are departing on a special Logistics charter leaving from Gate Twenty Three. Do you need assistance with your luggage? Then follow me.'

Alex found it difficult to keep his eyes off the woman's behind as she led the way for him, not least because he swore that she had an advertising sticker on her left buttock.

They passed through a metal-detector frame that pinged when Alex crossed the threshold. A bored guard ambled over, saw the Green Card, nodded and returned to his station. Great, Alex commented silently. What if this one's a counterfeit as well?

After following the stewardess along corridors playing bland muzack they eventually left the terminal building and crossed the concrete apron to a waiting Logistics jet. It was a Mini-Mover adapted for passengers with a button-in compartment that sported a bar, a sixty-channel television, reclining seats and personal quadro stereos. Alex found himself to be the only passenger on the aircraft. Initially he thought he was being spoiled but the stewardess informed him that they were merely taking the aircraft to Austria and he would be dropped off at a refuelling point en route.

Refraining from drink, he dropped off to sleep nevertheless, awaking only when the aircraft pitched into it's descent for the airport at Munich.

His buttock-marked stewardess once again escorted him to a cab and another taciturn driver whisked him away. It all felt curiously anti-climactic, with no sense of having crossed any international boundary. Only street signs in German actually showed that they were in a foreign country, those and the neon signs. Of which there were few, becoming fewer as they drove, since RSFG was located well outside Munich in the countryside.

The darkness of this same countryside was broken by occasional spots of light until they approached RSFG, which was an enormous sprawling site, well illuminated by light towers along the perimeter fence. It took ten minutes to get through to the lobby building and the reception desk, where he wearily dropped his case. A receptionist looked blankly at him when he waved his Green Card.

A large brown hand descended on his shoulder from behind, making him jump and turn suddenly.

'Hello,' said Olukaside.

'Ah. Hello,' replied Alex, staring a little. Who was this?

'I'm the Field Officer for this Double Digit,' announced Olukaside.

Alex nodded, a little overawed by the tall Nigerian. It was implicit that both were UNION members even though this was never mentioned.

RSFG, long used to putting up visitors, had an accommodation room for the two; as the lesser person Alex got a smaller room and smaller bed and consoled himself that Olukaside needed a long bed to make sure his legs didn't dangle. The Nigerian felt almost elated at residing once more on terra firma; spartan conditions might be at RSFG but they were better than those aboard that flying antique, the Iceberg.

Next morning brought a piercing alarm call for Alex, C# sustained for twenty seconds. He crawled out of bed and dressed in the creaseproof coveralls packed for him. Milos had insisted on giving him a special forearm holster for his electrical weapon that chafed, so he stuck it in an empty pencil pocket. Then he clipped his TACT unit onto his belt and the Green Card in the receiver slot. Then a quick wipe of a third-hand earlink monitor and he was ready. So was Olukaside. The Nigerian waited outside Alex's room smoking a roll-up of something that smelt vile. Alex felt his nostrils twitch in affront.

'Good morning - ah, dijen dobrey? If you want to have breakfast, follow me.'

Olukaside knew RSFG well, and led Alex straight to the canteen, past the impressive environs of the complex, all bright white plastic, chrome fittings and strip lights. The overall effect of this design certainly gave the impression of clinical efficiency and it lacked for nothing in the cuisine department either. Alex ordered hot stuffed croissants with ersatz coffee, food still defiantly unknown in Britain despite the Channel Tunnel.

Olukaside ate a meal of scrambled eggs made with tomato and onion, then downed a bowl of muesli, two rounds of toast and ersatz orange juice. Then he lit up one of his disgusting little cheroots and puffed away with great satisfaction.

'Excuse me, do you have to smoke that bloody awful stuff?' asked Alex, irritated.

Olukaside raised his eyebrows. Not polite.

'But of course. No smoking where I've been on duty.'

'Does it have to be so disgusting? You could fumigate with it,' commented the Serb, drily.

'Um! Well I like it and it's cheap. Russian herbal tobacco, so it isn't covered by anti-smoking laws. Machorka, they call it. You never heard of it?'

'We in Yugoslavia are not known for smoking garden weeds.'

That made Olukaside laugh. He refused to get even slightly annoyed at his companions jibing, instead assuring him that when they started working the cigarettes would stay in his pocket.

Work began around a table with portable greenscreens lying upon it. A pompous German psychologist introduced himself, then a uniformed policeman. First to speak was the policeman, in accented but clear English.

'You people are, ah, here at the request of Doctor Festinger, to carry out an investigation into a murder he believes may have taken place. You are needed because the, ah, offence, if actual, will have taken place on Federated Concordat territory.

'Available to you will be an Utility vehicle and a portable electronic snout, and you will also have one ground sensor unit each.'

Satisfied, the speaker sat down. Next came Doctor Festinger.

'Ah, yes. We are reasonably certain that a person has been killed, a German transient called Theo Blum. His killer is in German police custody at present, but we need a body for forensic purposes and to make a case against the killer. The killer was obviously under the influence of drugs - read this transcript and you'll see why - but his testimony as validated by Taunus Testing bears up in one respect; he firmly believes that Blum is dead. So, then, do we. But a body is needed. Which is where you come in, thank you.'

Alex turned to look at Olukaside. This was it? A general purpose dogsbody - or dog, come to that - purely out to locate a rotting corpse. After reading the transcript he shook his head in disbelief; they were dealing with a pair of dosed-up, full time junk artists one of whom had indeed murdered the other.

'Where do we start looking?' asked Alex, in a tone that masterfully mixed disdain with resignation.

The policeman coughed into one hand.

'Ah. That is, we don't know. Merely that "it" happened in small wood.'

Both UNION members expressed exasperation at this news since RSFG's estate was immense and included innumerable small woods. Alex read the transcript again and had an idea. He almost failed to voice it, thinking that the police would have considered it already.

'Bergen-op-Gauss figures in these reports, doesn't it? Can we take it that they were on the flight path for it?'

Ollukaside nodded and added an idea of his own.

'What we need - what we want - are the weather reports for those days -'

'June seventh and eighth,' added Alex.

'Yes. Weather reports, cloud base, wind speed and direction. All these factors. From these we can find out the likely paths of an aircraft flying in the vicinity on those days, compared to flight paths filed at Bergen.'

'We could eliminate any wood not on a flight path!' concluded Alex triumphantly. Thus they could narrow the search. That was the theory. As for the practice …

When they had both examined hard copies of weather reports forwarded from the Weather Institute in Munich, it became possible to plot two flight paths used on June seventh and eighth, instead of nine possible ones. They then suffered a considerable delay until a clued-up lab assistant produced a map that included Bergen-op-Gauss and outlying woods to a distance of ten kilometres. Both printouts were superimposed and copied, one in large format, one in reduced size for ease of carriage.

'Let us go and search,' decided Olukaside.

A grey cloud-laden sky greeted them with spasmodic rain when they ventured out (perhaps because of this none of their German counterparts came to see them off). Their Yute came in day-glo orange, chipped and scarred to reveal matt green underneath, doubtless Bundeswehr surplus. One of the balloon tyres displayed the large patch that denoted an old accident; what annoyed Olukaside was the absence of a canopy for their vehicle, since that meant they would get wet.

'They could have given us a newer one,' he grumbled to Alex, dumping a conical case in the cargo space. He took up the smaller boxes that held their "ground sniffer units" and stuck one in each jacket pocket. He further decided not to allow Alex to drive the six-wheeler, getting in and behind the steering wheel himself.

'Off we go,' he proclaimed, squeezing the throttle trigger. A mistake. Although the bodywork of the Yute was badly worn, the engine was in perfect condition and it kicked in powerfully enough to take the front wheels up in the air.

'Hey!' snapped the anxious passenger as his teeth came together involuntarily with a loud "clack". 'Careful!'

The driver headed north at full throttle and paid scant regard to previously travelled tracks, making lumps of turf and mud fly off the wheels as they lurched along at high speed.

Alex checked the smaller map in his possession. Nearly up to Wood One. Good. Surveying all the other numerous copses possibly concealing corpses, he felt a slightly smug glow having eliminated so many of them. Smugness rapidly dimmed when the duo started their search, using a grid overlapping one of their large-scale maps. Alex, being the junior, got to carry the electronic snout, which was awkward and tended to tip forward when the holder's wrist grew weak. Using a snout like this meant a searcher could locate a buried body via thermal differentials and confirm a finding with the highly sensitive but short-ranged ground units.

_If_ there actually was a body to find. An hour of searching yielded nothing more than a decomposed rabbit. They had been persistently rained on and were acquiring great cakes of mud on their boots, making them waddle comically.

'Forget Wood One, okay?' decided Olukaside. 'Let's just sit a minute. This is a lot slower than I thought it would be. Are you tired?'

'A bit,' admitted Alex. 'More bored than tired, really. I don't mind carrying on if there's a body to find but what if there's nothing?'

'Lots of paperwork.'

'And if there is a body?'

'Paperwork again, but more of it. We can't win.'

Alex went over what he'd been told about site surveillance at RSFG. There wasn't any, except of the actual buildings, thanks to strict German rules about electronic snooping. If an intruder got through the perimeter fence then they had to hike for kilometres over the countryside to get anywhere near the complex, and Polsat kept beady electronic eyes on the landscape. Unfortunately for the two searchers, the disks for the time in question were long erased and might not even have shown up a target as small as two men on foot without equipment. Damn civil liberties, cursed the Serb idly.

Wood Number Two happened to be a blank also, eventually. They tramped back to their transport again, splashing into a stream on the way to clean their boots. Wood Number Three was empty of corpses, as were Woods Four and Five. They retreated back to RSFG to eat a warming dinner, then solemnly set out again for Wood Number Six. Alex spent the time silently wondering why there was such a low level of confidence about finding a body.

'They should have brought in a dog,' he complained to Olukaside when they climbed out of the Yute.

'What!' exclaimed his partner. 'Do you know how much they cost! I saw this on the news last week - there are only twelve left -' and he broke off to point to a small jet approaching Bergen-op-Gauss, flying directly over them. 'Well, that proves we're still on the flight path, I suppose.'

The end of the day saw no success at any location, and the two wet, muddy and tired men returned for eight hours sleep. Alex went to bed convinced that the police didn't really expect any body to be found and had managed to palm off the job of looking for a non-existent body to UNION, specifically himself and Olukaside. The Nigerian seemed to be a lot more patient than Alex, proven by his cheery greeting the following morning and devouring of an equally large breakfast.

Off they went on their trek again, drawing a blank at Woods Nine, Ten and Eleven, a procedure that took them all day and put a dent even in Olukaside's optimism. They began again the next morning and things changed at Wood Twelve.

Ping! Went the electronic snout, loudly, making Alex jump in surprise. A pair of lights atop the unit flashed. Olukaside stayed silent. Alex peered into the scope attachment with one eye, having got the trick of looking at the real landscape with the other eye. The false-colour image in the scope showed a long yellow blur in a frame of red and yellow blobs; his weather eye merely saw grass dotted with a few flowers.

'Ah, Mister Olukaside. Will you test this with your sniffer? We have a trace here but I don't know what it is.'

The Other man pressed his probe against the indicated area of ground and waited. Ten minutes later they compared the probe's reading against a baseline graph on the case.

This trace, according to x over y, was three months old. Alex counted weeks backward in his head and came to the first week in June, approximately. So, it was old enough to be the decomposing body; the microbe count and emission traces corresponded with a decomposing body; the trace was large enough to be a rotting body.

It was a decomposing body.

Olukaside called back to RSFG on his TACT, placing a Most Urgent priority on it, yet still had to wait twenty minutes before anyone acknowledged the call. Alex, standing well clear of the TACT, could still hear the policeman's exclamation from the TACT's speaker.

'Where are we? Designated Wood Twelve, the one near the pond. Yes, a pond. You'll see the Yute, anyway. Oh, don't worry about _that_. I want to keep my breakfast down.'

The duo packed up their equipment and sat in their vehicle, waiting for the expected entourage to arrive. Which it did eventually, led by a jet copter flying very low. Alex noticed a great pregnant bulge in the belly of the aircraft and realised it denoted a larger and more sophisticated version of the electronic snout he had been carrying about. Soon after the aircraft arrived they were joined by a small fleet of vehicles equally composed of Bundespolizei and RSFG. The whole of Wood Twelve, festooned with tape, became off-limits whilst forensic staff busied themselves with protective plastic sheets. Inspector Dieter came over to see the successful Double Digit team and offered his congratulations to them.

'I am very, ah, surprised. I did not think that your, ah, search would reveal anything. But you do not have the correct area.'

At first Alex thought the policeman meant they had strayed away from the flight path plan, so he showed their position on the map to Dieter, who tutted and shook his head, concerned in a self-important manner about saving face over a minor detail.

'No, this is not correct. There is no pond.'

'Yes there is, look -' began Alex, pausing when he saw Dieter had turned and walked away. Ignorant shit, thought the Serb, you didn't expect us to find anything, it embarrassed you when we did so you get snotty over a pond. He jumped out of the Yute and threw stones into the pond, just to prove a point.

Later that night Alex and Olukaside both attended the rapidly convened post-mortem. The remains taken out of Wood Twelve were well decomposed and smelt appalling, but what really made Alex feel ill were the carefully bagged wildlife specimens arrayed on a lab table, all taken from the corpse. They moved.

Overhead, a video camera on an extensor arm, with a scavenger mike attached, came down to film the remains, programmed to keep a maintain a consistent view whatever the investigating surgeon did. Her first action was to open up the skull with a sonic saw, creating a horrendous buzzing that set everyone's teeth on edge and also creating the evil stink of burnt bone.

The German spoke to herself about her progress and findings, quiet asides in German that were picked up by the microphones for playback later that day.

The post-mortem's post-mortem was attended by both UNION agents, Dieter, Festinger, the surgeon and a software technician. They congregated in a nondescript room that possessed table full of exhibits, a large-scale wall map and a television screen. The surgeon stood up to talk first, cradling a pointer.

'Good morning,' she said in English. 'I am Doctor Franck, as you already know and I will begin by describing what I found last night. The proceedings will be officially recorded for the police files. If you have a question please ask straight away, there is no need to wait.

'The body was that of a male, aged about twenty three, Caucasian, one metre forty in height, approximately seventy kilos in weight. These facts correspond roughly with the description of Leo Blum that we have. His dental charts have not arrived yet and there are no police tissue samples to cross-match with, but we have Renovator to work with. Anyway, we shall go on.' She motioned to the software technician.

"Renovator" had a faintly familiar ring to it, having been mentioned during Alex's training and whilst with the Sheffield police; this would be the first time he experienced it in action.

First on the monitor was the flensed skull of the victim, bleached bone denuded of all flesh. The Renovator program began: a web of muscles formed over the bare skull, glistening and wet, with a touch of poetic licence. A stark mask, made more grotesque by the sudden appearance of two eyeballs in the empty sockets. Areas of fat filled in, then a final covering of flesh to produce a face. With a flourish the software technician produced a coloured hard copy. A good likeness of Theo Blum when compared to a driving licence photograph, more closely descriptive than a series of forensic measurements.

Next the surgeon moved on to the cause of death.

'The victim suffered death due to multiple gunshot wounds, eighteen in total. We took out eighteen bullets from the body, nine Squash-head and nine armour-piercing. From powder traces and the single flesh burn identifiable on the remaining skin I would say that the fist shot, direct to the head, has to be the immediately fatal one. It was a Squash-head bullet, thus tissue-quake and hydrostatic shock probably pulped most of the left hemisphere, killing him instantly. The other seventeen bullets were superfluous. You cannot recover from a skull full of jelly where a brain should be.'

Dieter nodded in a self-satisfied manner to himself.

The software tehcnie moved over to a wall map and took the pointer from Doctor Franck.

'Using a flouroscope, infra-red filters and a microbial census, we located a trail of bloodspots on the earth and grass, leading back from the burial site towards the pond. The killing therefore took place at or near the pond.'

'What kind of weapon?' asked Olukaside.

'A fourteen point five millimetre - that's fifty-five in old calibre - handgun, probably an M77 with caseless ammunition. They hold up to twenty rounds. We're waiting for a forensics report on the rounds taken from the body.'

'Have you looked for the weapon?'

'Of course! Including the pond. No traces of the weapon anywhere.'

Another point occurred to Alex about the burial. That body had been carefully hidden, so as to leave no indication that a grave existed; the sod had been cut with a knife, the earth taken from underneath scattered over a wide area to disguise the excavation, Theo's body dumped and covered with lots of earth, the turves carefully replaced. Not that Alex had very much experience of murders, yet the killing had been very precise with none of the usual random sloppiness that transpired when such crimes occurred. Could they perhaps be dealing with a person used to killing? Conversely, how possible could it be that a drugged-up lowlife would abruptly shoot his friend, nor by accident either with so many holes; carry or drag the body hundreds of metres to a wood, showing a sensible caution; construct an expertly-made grave - and then run away to Hamburg and confess it all once they were arrested. Lothar didn't have a gun on his person when arrested, nor was there one in the docklands squat he'd been living in, nor did Pieter ever mention his fellow criminal having carried a gun. Lothar the guilty party? Didn't seem likely. In fact it seemed wildly inconsistent, a bizarre alternation of behaviours. Dieter, however, felt assured that they possessed enough evidence to charge Lothar; as for inconsistencies - remember, they were dealing with one of the drug sub-culture who probably didn't know what his own name was at the time of the murder.

The group adjourned for lunch. Alex ate listlessly, not really interested in what went into his digestive system since his mind wandered elsewhere. He didn't feel happy with the direction their post-mortem was taking -could it be possible that a third man had been present with Lothar, a third man who helped to commit the offence?

'We need a new lever to work with,' he offered to Olukaside.

'Right.'

'I'm going to see that software technie again.'

'Right.' Then: 'What for?'

Alex tapped the side of his nose.

'If you want dirt, start at the bottom.'

Olukaside frowned, wondering if he was the butt of some strange Slavic joke.

The software technician present at the post-mortem looked less than happy to be disturbed at lunch but he was flattered by the attention. As Alex suspected, there had originally been more to the forensic examination than had been presented to the Double Digit team. The discussion proved to be his first use of the TACT unit's translation function and he found it to be accurate, if a little slow.

'How sure are you that a gun of this type - Em Seven Seven - is the murder weapon?'

'Oh - quite certain. Not positive one hundred per cent, mind you, but fairly certain. We don't have the relevant database here, you see, so the information needs to go to the Bundespolizei and back again once it gets approved. Takes a while.'

'Hmm. Are they common, these guns? That is, could they be traced -'

'Huh! I shouldn't think so, there's thousands of them in the SENATOR armies. M77's aren't exactly common, but they aren't rare. You couldn't trace this one, not easily.'

'If it is one.'

Feeling his veracity to be in question, the technie bristled. He pushed his seat back from the lunch table and looked round at his fellow technicians.

'Hey, you want to make certain? Go shoot a few practice bullets from one and compare their signatures. Won't be the same, of course, but they will be similar, close enough to see if there really is a connection. Now go away and let me eat my lunch in peace.'

Alex did just that, being literal. He went to Olukaside and asked for permission to follow his idea.

'Fine, just don't go annoying our hosts.' He carried on eating. For such a tall, thin man he could certainly put away a lot of fodder without trace.

Alex borrowed an M7 from a "flexible" security guard, upon producing his Green Card, and managed to browbeat a technie into producing a pair of ear-protectors and a bucket of sand. Then he prowled around the bright shiny corridors of RSFG until a suitable empty room presented itself. Setting the fire bucket against the wall in a corner, he took up the firing stance as taught during the Meatgrinder.

'Everything alright? Oh! Goodness!' came a voice from behind him.

Alex turned around quickly. He looked, unknown to him, rather threatening from the rear; a man wearing ear-protectors, with a bulky TACT unit clipped to his belt, carrying a pistol and with a Zap Gun sticking out of one boot.

The Asian woman in the doorway looked alarmed, as well she might.

'Hello! Just a ballistics test. Nothing to worry about.' He smiled winningly (he hoped) and the woman ran off, either due to alarm or satisfaction.

Trying to remember old instructions, Alex fired twice into the sand-filled bucket, twin colossal explosions in the confined space that impinged even with his ear-protectors set to exclude everything. Then he carried the bucket off to a laboratory. To find the bullets meant sand-sieving, then it was off to collect one of the evidential bullets and compare it in a stereoscope with a sand-bucket one.

They were congruent. Not identical obviously since two different guns had been used, but similar. Therefore, the gun used had indeed been an M77. Alex felt faintly foolish, having expended a lot of effort to prove what they already knew. He tutted mentally; if this investigation had been carried out by the Bundespolizei, if FedCon hadn't insisted on keeping jurisdiction on it's own territory, they could have known positively about those bullets form the start. Very dog in the manger.

He sighed and took the pistol back to the security guard.

'Thanks,' said the guard sourly and sarcastically. 'They reported an idiot with a gun running around. I better not get into trouble over this.' He popped the clip out of the handle's magazine housing. 'And you used two rounds. I have to account for these,' he said. "I have to account for these you stupid bastard" his expression added.

'Sorry.' Alex failed to sound even slightly sorry. He turned to go and realised just what he'd seen and turned back slowly.

'Just a second. Do that again, what you did with the clip.'

'You must be joking!' snapped the guard. 'No more favours.'

'

'That's what happened. They never expected to find a body. When we did they were caught by surprise, without any plans, and the forensic search didn't get properly co-ordinated.'

'And so?' replied Olukaside, not obviously impressed.

'So they checked the pond all right, but only with metal detectors. I know, because I asked Dieter. A search like that would only have shown up metal objects or objects with metal in them, right?'

'A fair definition of a gun, yes. Is this leading somewhere?'

'It is! That gun, the murder weapon, had a plastic magazine for the bullets, a plastic disposable magazine that the killer would have to load themselves, insert themselves and eject themselves.'

Olukaside's frown cleared.

'Fingerprints on the magazine. Yes, that would be a positive indicator. If there is a magazine, if there ever were any fingerprints on it and if they remain.'

Privately, Olukaside shared the bafflement that Alex felt about the killing; it bore too many tell-tales of the skilled operator to the work of a drugged-up drop-out. But who, then! A third man? That added a layer of complications.

'There may have been a third man, you see. If there were fingerprints on the magazine - not Lothar's - then that would be true.'

Again, this would raise questions. Why stand in a pond to kill Theo; who was the killer; where did they come from; why carry out such a killing?

That night, when reception improved, Olukaside transmitted his findings to the Iceberg, scrambled via his TACT unit. To his surprise an actual person answered him; Nils, who felt stunningly bored at his duty console.

'Hello ICE07, Senior Super Nils. I that who I think it is - tall, dark but not very handsome?'

'Less of that, this is an official report. We decided to re-check the actual murder site with seismic sensors and uncovered a discarded ammunition clip. This had one and a half viable prints still on it, that came from neither the suspect or victim, so a third man is now postulated, the man who actually carried out the killing. We need to run the prints to you and a full comparison run with all the collected databases.'

'What! That would take forever.'

'Sooner started, sooner finished. On with the report. There appears to be a consensus in the Bundepolizei that Lothar Hellman is the guilty party, that there are no other suspects, a position I feel they will change when this evidence is presented to them, eventually. The investigation continues.'

Olukaside signed off, then lit up one of his cigarettes for a quiet think. Being Field Officer meant writing out the report for (up the line of command and perusal) Weiss. The report could be done in one of two ways: precisely, with no intrusion of doubt, or with all the hedges he'd felt. Might as well choose the latter; Weiss knew enough to doubt a bland report and to question the reporter personally, which meant a summons to the Presence for a grilling and after a six month tour of duty the Nigerian felt no hurry to return to the cramped, smokeless, flying antique.

While his superior coded up a report, Alex went for a drink in the canteen, finding to his disgust that they only had non-alcoholic drinks on sale. Subsidised and cheap but definitely not stimulating.

Damn and shit! I wanted a drop of spirits. That was a good idea of mine, it ought to be celebrated. I bet Oyewole claims it as his. That's rank for you. Oh well, let's have some of that nice tasty German lager without any nasty alcohol.

He walked down the serving aisle to pay for his plastic stein of lager. There was no attendant at this time of night, just a scanning eye, pay slot and price indicator set into a blank metal wall. The good thing about night in the canteen was the lack of competition for tables. There were only a few night-shift workers on their coffee-breaks and not wanting to interfere, Alex sat at a separate table.

'Hey, over there!' called a woman in Serbian. 'You want to come over?' Curious, Alex trotted over with his lager. There were three people at the table, Elizabeta, Morika and Bruno. The first was Serbian, the latter two German, able to get by in English as conversation developed.

'You're the one who has been turning RSFG upside down,' stated Bruno.

'That's me. Just a nuisance from MJO.' He drank his lager. Dear me, ran the thoughts in his head, people have been talking. Training said that this wasn't supposed to happen. What to do now.

The drinkers remained relaxed and affable, simply wanting company, conversation and gossip, if available. Bruno got another round of drinks and refused to take any payment from Alex. They got around to talking about thirst, heat, then the hottest places they had ever been.

'Somalia,' stated Bruno. 'Trouble-shooting refrigeration plant. Man it was so hot there, so hot you could see the salt forming on your skin.'

'Rhodes,' said Elizabeta, not adding any details.

'Um. Let me see. Oh, I know, a day trip to Tangiers, from Gibraltar. Very very hot. Indeed,' said Morika, with emphasis.

'Nuevo Laredo. Especially with the napalm.'

For a moment the other three exchanged glances. Just who were they drinking with - a soldier?

'Were you in the army? A soldier?' asked Morika, doubtfully, thinking it a shame if he was and turned out to be as stupidly macho like every soldier under the sun, especially since he possessed such nice sad eyes.

'Ha!' retorted Alex, a touch of fire in both eyes and voice. 'Elizabeta ought to know the answer to that one. 'Course I was in the army, national conscription at eighteen. Two years.'

'I didn't like my national service but you seem to hate yours,' stated Bruno.

Alex sneered.

'It was worse than prison could be. Actually I spent time in a military prison and that was worse. A total waste of two years. When I came out they - the State, the Education Ministry, that is - had changed funding for student grants so I never got a chance to go on from college.'

'What the hell did they throw you in jail for! You don't exactly look the hardened criminal!' half-joked Bruno, for once not stating things flatly.

'Ah, yes, well, I told my commanding officer to go fuck himself and punched him on the nose, actually. He thought he could make me clean toilets by shouting at me so I shouted back. Then he hit me so I hit him back.'

That got him another round of drinks. His companions admired his moral stance. Alex, however, knew what his outburst of temper cost in the long run. He took a longer perspective now.

'Yes, I saw what armies and war does to people, in Mexico. I cannot understand why but the innocent always suffer.' Everybody nodded at this truism.

There. That was quite enough. Now he'd probably dream about the bus full of dead children or about driving a truck into the Galleria, unable to get past second gear.

Morika looked at her watch.

'To preserve life, it's a wonderful thing,' she said, looking him right in the eyes. His heart gave an extra hard beat that reverberated up and down his body because that used to be a saying of his and she had a nice smile. No, not nice, nice didn't do it justice. Alluring.

'Alluring.'

'Pardon! What did you say?'

'Uh - sorry, I spoke what I thought. I meant your smile. Oops. Am I being rude?'

'No. But if you can say that, then I have to be allowed to say that you have wonderful sad eyes.'

Bruno and Elizabeta, aware of where the conversation would lead, tactfully and quietly said goodbye and departed. After they had gone a slightly strained silence fell. Alex looked appraisingly at Morika; she was thin and tanned with a wild shock of dark hair and true, she did have an alluring smile with lips that swelled like fruit. Of course, while he studied her she studied him, seeing a man on the short side of average, with a neatly trimmed moustache, Mediterranean complexion and a pair of expressive eyes that hinted at dark depths. For a Serb he seemed to be refreshingly free from the sexist crap the men back at home came out with.

'Listen, Alex, I have a suggestion.'

'Go ahead, please.'

'Would you like a coffee?'

'Hmm? A coffee? Ah, certainly.'

He stood up first and gave a dazzling smile. Morika led the way and Alex found himself staring at her buttocks, clad in mock-denim. She turned around and frowned at him for this, but he defused the implicit criticism with another smile of such sincerity that Morika felt unable to chide him. Heart on his sleeve.


	6. Chapter 6

14) The Nice Man Cometh

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

STATE CAPITOL ASSEMBLY BUILDING

AUSTIN

TEXAS

Mad Jack was back! The word was out amongst the staff in the building, making the September air seem even colder than normal, creating a stir from basement to penthouse; secretaries found memos to type, supervisors discovered people who weren't working, security guards made people queue for searching.

A court clerk received a call from their contact at the airport, saying that McClusky just left, a message that got passed up the line until it reached a penthouse suite, that of Congressional Aide Cheyne. He passed it back down the line of communication again until it percolated down to the lowest level.

Great, he told himself, not meaning it at all. Half an hour to prepare, not long but it will help.

In fact it didn't. Ever one for a bit of sharp practice, McClusky had in fact left the airport thirty minutes ahead of his official convoy. The first anyone in the Assembly Building knew of this was when an olive drab jeep screeched to a tyre-abrading halt in the street below. Four uniformed figures leapt out, the tallest of them leading the way up the Capitol steps two at a time. Once they reached the portico two armed guards hesitated before coming to attention. Their salutes were returned by the men in uniform. When the party had passed the two guards exchanged knowing glances with each other.

Mad Jack and his companions did not enter the building via the lobby, going over to the lifts on the left instead. Taking the middle one they rode express to the top floor by using a MagIC key to override the security brakes, thus reaching the top floor without being seen by any but a handful of people.

Cheyne was dialling through to his manager when the suite door flew violently open under the impact of a kick, done for effect since Mad Jack unlocked it first. The aide jumped so violently that the cordless fell out of his hand. And then Cheyne's worst possible scenario came true as Senator McClusky, wearing a camouflage uniform with the silver eagles and the Lone Star Guard fatigue hat he favoured, stamped into the suite.

'Hi Cheyne, surprise surprise! On your feet, quickly now boy.'

'Ahh, uh, yes sir, Senator. Mister McClusky.'

The tall Texan took his aides place and put his booted feet squarely upon the veneered table top. Cheyne winced internally; that table top cost a hundred dollars per square inch and here the Senator was, treading dirt into it and scratching it, too.

'Cheyne, Sergeant Farrell here has come to inspect the security of your premises and staff and I'd like you to escort him while he does so. Is that okay with you? 'Cause it is with me.'

The aide gulped awkwardly. There was no realistic way he could refuse and remain in employment.

Sergeant Farrell looked extremely bored, cracking his knuckles one after the other. Essentially a five-and-a-half foot square of muscle, the NCO obviously couldn't care less about inspecting the Capitol Building, it's staff or the security precautions. Nor did McClusky, but he did want Cheyne out of the way. Putting a meaty arm around Cheyne's shoulder, Farrell carefully pushed him out of the room, pulling the door shut behind them. The three remaining men visibly relaxed. One of them, with a major's insignia, produced what appeared to be a humidor and swept the room with it. The single light in the device blinked green.

'Okay, we're clean.'

McClusky expected the room to be clean and bugless since he had spent several thousand dollars on interior design, hiring an ex-Agency man to install a jamming device, when the room was refurbished a year ago.

'Well,' said McClusky. 'Shall we have a drink? Dave, you can play mother.'

Dave Cordman, the major, poured out three tumblers of whisky with a stiff jolt in each, then handed one each to McClusky and another to the third man, Peter Stone, a captain.

'Here's to a hit,' toasted McClusky, macarbrely.

'Ah, right, cheers,' replied Cordman, knocking back a big swallow. Stone drank but remained silent.

'By the way, did our weak link problem get resolved?' asked Mad Jack. Stone took another sip, grinned bleakly but stayed silent, still.

'Oh yes,' replied Cordman. 'We took a day trip to one of the open-hearth furnaces up at the Scranton Museum and threw the weak link in. Total melt down.'

A satisfied silence settled.

'Are we going to increase volume of the product we're shipping?' asked Stone.

Mad Jack shook his head.

'Nah. Expansion is how we acquired the weak link in the first place.'

Another silence fell while they sipped away, savouring the spirit.

'This is top-dollar whisky, Jack,' commented Cordman, impressed. The senator winked.

'All the way from Glen Shiel, Scotland.'

Cordman blinked. What about the embargo? Ran through his mind, and the senator picked up on his expression.

'Hey, Dave, remember my name. Blood is thicker than water, unless it's aqua vitae, better known as _uisge beathe_ in Gaelic.'

After a while, bored of the business going on between McClusky and Cordman, to which he was emphatically not privy, Stone sat down at the room's terminal and began tapping in request codes at random. One after another the terminal rejected every word he put in. Mad Jack looked on in amusement, having finished discussing things with Cordman. The latter walked over to the busy key-tapper.

'Pete, you may as well leave it. Cheyne will have altered all the access passwords. You may have read the background file on him but blind luck will only get you so far.'

Stone cursed and punched the screen.

'How do we get in?'

Cordman momentarily wished he had one of those Total Access Computer Terminals that the Fed Commies issued to their agents. With one of those it would have been easy. Without one there was only one way he knew of at the moment, and that would be to dial in to Open Sesame, have them lock onto Cheyne's modem and speed a datastream to break the passwords. An expensive process costing upwards of a thousand dollars per second.

'What time do you have?' asked McClusky, suddenly.

'Two twenty-three. We're okay for a while yet.'

'Yeah. Oh, by the way, I hear some longhair liberal comedian is using my name in his act, saying how reactionary I am in regard to drugs. Sending me up.'

Cordman frowned. So?

'Isn't that good?'

'No it isn't!' snapped Mad Jack. 'I don't want my name associated with drugs, hard, soft or couldn't care less, full stop. See to it.'

Great, thought Cordman, careful to keep his disapproval internal. No, actually, wait a minute, we can make this look good. Use Phillips, that homo PR aide of Cheyne's, we've got a hold on him; get him to give our comedian friend an envelope of cash after informing a friendly journo. That way the longhair gets a reaming, Phillips goes down and Senator Orde is blackened by implication. Two birds, one stone. Yeah!

'Okay, sir, consider it done.'

Meanwhile, Stone had managed, by sheer luck, persistence ( and a lack of imagination on the part of Cheyne, who used his wife's name as a password), to gain access to part of Cheyne's computer records. Not all of them, just enough to make interesting reading.

'Hey, come look what I found. Phone calls, a record of phone calls Cheyne's made.'

The monitor displayed a list of the phone calls that Cheyne had been making that day, starting from early that morning. Stone proudly flourished a hand, showing what he stumbled across. When Cordman came over to have "an investigate" he spotted an outgoing call to the offices of Senator Orde, made only minutes before they had arrived.

'Senator, guess what we found. A call going out -'

'To Senator Orde's office. Yeah, I know.'

Now, how did he know that! Wondered Cordman. If he knew already he kept it under his coonskin pretty damn well.

'Hey, Dave, it was pretty friggin' obvious, you know. Orde put pressure on the selection panel and one of his pigeons got appointed, obviously to keep an eye on me and report back to Orde and his staff. It goes on more at election time, that's the only difference. And before you ask, yes we have a man in their camp. Well, now that I know for certain what Cheyne is, he's neutralised.'

Yeah, right, agreed Cordman. Someone else to take the place of Phillips, in fact. Oh, that's neat! I like it. Occasionally he found himself wondering if perhaps Senator Orde didn't have a member of staff plotting his, David M. Cordman's, demise, thoughts that even more occasionally led him to question his involvement in the cut-throat world of American politics. However, once you were in, you didn't leave. Not voluntarily, certainly.

'Two forty-five. Time to go. Button up tightly, folks.'

They went ostentatiously downstairs, making sure that their presence became known to one and all, spreading what Mad Jack called "a little healthy fear" amongst the Capitol workers. McClusky stopped once or twice to chat to people he knew.

By the time the threesome reached the lobby it was nearly three o'clock and before they stepped outside Mad Jack drew Cordman aside for a quiet word.

'Dave, just a word. I know you've organised this. That's all good and fine, but bear this in mind - if I go, my people know where your family live and ten minutes later you'll be a widower without kids. So if Orde got to you, to arrange this, they're dead. Okay! Good! Now, let's go.'

Not for the first time, Cordman considered how chilling it was, the way McClusky could switch from paranoid threats in a jovial tone to an expressionless matter of fact tone, maintaining a cheery smile the whole time.

By now the official motor cavalcade had arrived and parked in the reserved space outside the Capitol Building. In some confusion, the guards and drivers were sitting in their vehicles, leaning on them or sitting on the Capitol steps. Onec McClusky started down these steps people all leapt around busily, communing on earlink monitors, firing up engines, opening doors.

Mad Jack reached halfway down the steps before the event happened, as arranged. Between lifting up his right foot and putting it down, an invisible hammer swung from nowhere to hit him over his entire chest, driving all the breath from his lungs. The steps flew sideways, then up and sky came over, then steps again. He breath wouldn't come and he couldn't feel his chest. The edge of a step pressed into his cheek. Nothing hurt, not yet, in fact he felt numb all over. Gradually he realised there was a chorus of shouting and yelling going on all around him. Peter Stone shouted "The roof! The roof!"; a crackle of shots were taking place in the background.

It took less than a second for McClusky to realise that he had been shot, by a gunman probably situated across 15th Street, on the roof or upper floors of the District Capitol Office.

All this for the Ethics Committee, he grimly told himself, then passed out.

Father McCutcheon turned the radio off. He tried hard not to feel the hand of Divine Retribution behind the shooting of Mad Jack McClusky, knowing that the fratricidal politics of the New America Party were more likely to be responsible. Still, the biter bit, he told himself. Now _he_ knows what it's like, to suddenly get shot for no reason.

The priest was not bitter about those of his friends and parishoners who had been disappeared, and in fact could find it in his heart to pray for the souls of those who did the disappearing act. Faith. It consoled and supported him in his struggle against the forces that had hijacked political power in America, forces that even now would be groping their way towards him. With a determined straightening of his back, he turned the power on and began to watch as the ancient Gestetner machine began its noisy duty, cranking off the sheets that he would distribute later tonight to the group leaders. They in turn would pass them out to their group members, who would paste or post or hide the leaflets where ordinary people could see them. McCutcheon was a member of the American Catholic Underground, that tentacular (not to say hydra-like) organisation that had developed in opposition to the NAP, one of the weedlike underground groups that so distracted the FBI . The priest had discovered the Gestetner wrapped in a rotting tarpaulin down in the cellars of the Catholic Mission over a year ago, and knew immediately that it had been a sign from God: spread the truth, give people the gospel news and defy the censored media. He knew people here in Seattle in the Underground and promptly joined, creating the leaflet titled, simply, "The Light". Never more than a double-sided sheet of A4, it had so aroused the ire of the FBI, the NAP, local and state police and for all he knew the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms too, that a million-dollar reward now sat on his head. Despite that, he had been at liberty for a year, puncturing the streams of lies and deceit that the government pumped out, receiving tips and information from friends and relatives, from people within the establishment who hated what it had become, from sources abroad.

Finally, the copying machine clattered to a stop and he turned it off, with an affectionate pat. He feared the noise it made when operating, knowing that it might be the clue that tipped off the police to his operation. In the fall he'd had to move it from the Mission when a curious passerby had heard the racket through an injudiciously opened window. They might not say anything to anyone, but then again … And the transfer had been the closest to disaster he'd ever come. He'd been driving to the church with Stan Mazurka, a brawny parishoner who could carry the machine single-handed, when a patrol car pulled them over on a random check. Stan had paled and muttered prayers when the patrolman swaggered over. Once the hard-eyed policeman saw the priest and the tarp over the Gestetner, he got curious and told them to uncover it. Father McCutcheon was thinking of excuses as he tugged the cloth loose and the cop saw the machine, his eyes widening a little. For a second he looked at the machine, then gestured for McCutcheon to cover it again.

'Nah. Nothing here,' he called to his partner. 'Sorry to have troubled you, Father,' he said, with a deadpan wink.

'The guy upstairs heard me,' avowed Stan.

Father McCutcheon did not debate the point.

Now, Stan was back again, in the chapel. He had ushered in a small, dark and exotic-looking woman who looked around her with a curious and unreadable expression.

Mexican? wondered Father McCutcheon, or Latino of some kind. He was puzzled at her presence here, near the Canadian border, when Mexico was so much further south. The pipeline would get her to Canada if she needed, but Mexico would have been closer for her.

'Oh, hi Father. This is -'

'Ruth Strauss,' said the woman, very quickly.

'Shalom alechem,' said McCutcheon, extending his hand. The woman blinked rapidly, apparently taken by surprise at his unquestioning acceptance of a jew in aCatholic church. 'The description "Catholic" can also apply with a small "c", Ms Strauss. A fifth of our membership is made up of Protestants. In this group we already have three jews - well, one Orthodox, one Liberal and one Marxist-Leninist who's declares himself an atheist. We are united in our resistance to a great evil and denominational differences tend to disappear as a result. Since you are here, Stan and his loyaltly committee have already vetted you. How can I help?'

Ruth Strauss blinked again.

'Ah - well - ah - this is a bit fast for me, really. I sort of expected a long settling-in period.'

Stan laughed silently. The priest glared at him and continued.

'No, sadly we don't have settling-in. Our members have to hit the ground running. Perhaps you would like to ask some questions, find your feet?'

'Oh yeah. What are you doing here?'

'Tonight I'm preparing a release of the pamphlet we send out. It's called "The Light".' The woman's eyes widened at that and she looked impressed. 'I see you know of it already! Yes, I write and print it from here.'

'Wow! I remember when I saw that the first time! That is so cool! What's in it this time?'

McCutcheon cleared his throat in embarassment, not used to the praise.

'Uh, well, this is one dedicated to two Special Agents of the FBI who decided their conscience didn't allow them to carry on in the job as before. There's Special Agent York, who objected to what he had to do on moral grounds; he sent in information to us about government eavesdropping and mail-searching. The other side of the leaflet is for Special Agent XYZ, who hasn't been caught but who gave us information on how the FBI tracks and deals with protest groups like ours, because he felt that all the internal spying the FBI did meant it neglected other duties.'

Ruth nodded to herself at this, seemingly impressed at McCutcheon's testimony.

'And now, Ms Strauss, I have to ask you what you can do for us.'

'No problem. My brother is a mail inspector in Seattle. Last month they got his boyfriend on a morals charge and Steve is hopping mad, ready to do them down in revenge. He wanted some way to get back at them and I said I'd look into it. I know there's the Democratic Labour Group, bu tI didn't know how to contact them, and the Rainbow are too violent. So - here I am.'

McCutcheon visibly perked up. A mail inspector! Things were on the up!

15) A Parting

RSFG

MUNICH

SEPTEMBER

Alex slept only a little. One of his kneecaps hurt again and as a result he lay awake next to Morika until five o'clock. She was quite a surprise package, all things considered, but what she considered him to be - that was less sure. Still, he needed to get back to Room A312 or Olukaside would tannoy him at one minute past seven. With a twinge of conscience Alex left a non-commital note for his paramour and left.

C# for twenty seconds, a tuneful and loud alarm call. Alex groped his way out of bed and got dressed on automatic pilot. This time he stuck the Zap Gun down the elasticated side of his boot. The instant the door opened a cloud of evil-smelling smoke greeted his nostrils, Olukaside's herbal mixture preceding the man himself.

'So here you are. Okay, follow me and I'll brief you.'

'Follow to where?'

'The canteen. I passed my report on to the Iceberg last night. They called me back this morning at ten to six. There appears to be a pattern of sorts emerging.'

Alex felt blank. They picked up ersatz coffee and toast with sliced sausage and sat.

'Not just about this incident, there are others, inexplicable ones that are way out of the normal profile.'

To Alex this sounded rather vague, only faintly threatening. Like thunder in the distance.

16) Hot Air

ICE07

GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

EASTERN MEDITERANNEAN

SEPTEMBER

Officially members aboard ICE07 were on permanent duty and had no leisure time. Of course, human nature being what it is, this nonsense got treated with the derision it deserved and members held a certain portion of their day as time off, remaining nominally on-call.

Now, on the observation deck, an informal discussion took place between UNION assignees around a private viewing booth with the screen left on but the sound reduced in volume. Bibor was there, along with Rossi, Gray and others.

'There is a pattern here, a network -' began Bibor.

'Bull!' snorted Gray. 'That's a nonsense, how could there be!'

'No, I agree with Bibor. There is a connection,' stated Rossi.

'Seriously?'

'Look. The Threat Assessment Package has sorted all this out. There is a connection between those bomb attacks at Red Rock, the American military engineers going berserk, Atom City being attacked.'

'Must be quite a persuasive connection to join the dots on all three of those.'

'Yes. It's our ex-Number Two, Bob Chernovsky. Seen at all three sites.'

'Perhaps. We can't trust the Americans to tell the truth about anything, you know.'

'They didn't report anything, we eavesdropped on them, got the information via FIDO. They don't know that we know that they know.'

'Alright, so Chernovsky is involved. Where does that leave us?'

'So there's the pattern.'

'I still think there's a network.'

'No, can't see it. What pattern is there? No-one gains from an attack on Krasniy Kameniev, no-one at all.'

'Perhaps the Russians would gain from an attack on Atom City.'

'Yeah, and Chernovsky's Russian. Just about proves it, eh? It's a plot by him to take over the whole world.'

'Oh come on! Chernovsky was in UNION before the wheel got invented. How the hell do we know he's gone over -'

'How likely is it?'

'There's no alternative, he must be responsible.'

While his subordinates argued amongst each other to no conclusion, Weiss communed with more high-powered FedCon members. Not in person, only by broadcast. As he saw it, merely one of the interminable meetings he needed to attend to; Bibor ought to be assuming a portion of them but lacked the experience needed, an irksome reminder about the loss of Chernovsky.

Which, by coincidence, happened to be the topic of discussion at the moment.

'How serious is this man's defection?' asked one of the Security Review Commission members. 'I mean, he can be replaced, can't he?'

'Yes. That isn't the crux of the matter. Chernovsky was my Number Two for five years and an assignee for three years before that an inductee before that. In short, he knows UNION inside-out from the bottom upwards. As a result of his presumed defection, capture or interrogation we have been forced to change codes, ciphers and various software packages dealing with security. A long and slow process, I warn you.'

Costly, too, Weiss might have added. Contingency plans for such an eventuality had been laid down years ago but their implementation to date was rather stumbling.

'Can we say, then, that currently measures are being undertaken to resolve the assumed defection of an important UNION member?'

Oh yes, better get the story right before the media got hold of it. A display screen lit up with a unanimous collection of green lights via broadcast; there was a clear consensus between the scattered Committee members. They moved on to the next item on their tele-agenda: Red Rock and Various Security Aspects Associated With It. Weiss reported that a UNION agent had been despatched on the Red Rocket when the extent of the disaster became obvious, hoping to impress his overseers with this, since the launch schedule for Krasniy Rackyeta had been brought forward by a month and discomfited a great many people; tourists, passengers, crew and System Command traffic controllers. With a high-cost, long-burn, rapid transit to Mars there would be an extra billion marks on the balance sheet, but Weiss knew from past experience that when Mars was concerned expense meant little. All nations working in harmony, that kind of back-slapping self-congratulatory stuff, where nobody wanted to play the villain and cut the budget.

As he mentioned, security precluded any transmission from their agent on Mars unless exceptional circumstances warranted it; there were still the American bases on the Moon to consider, their Big Ear satellites and monitoring stations, all of which would eagerly eavesdrop on any Earthbound transmission.

17) Our Man On Mars

RED ROCK GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

MARS

EARTH RELATIVE SEPTEMBER

The Red Rocket wasn't capable of travel in an atmosphere and it couldn't cope with gravity wells, either. This meant that it needed to stand well off in orbit whilst passengers and crew were ferried up from or down to it's planet of call. Despite the name, the vessel that travelled between Mars, the Moon and Earth looked nothing like the conventional streamlined missile so beloved of old. The forward section was a torus with two cross-corridors running along two diameters at right angles to each other; and the juncture of these was a cylindrical body. From the rear of the torus ran another length of corridor, terminating in the power plant, a spherical unit. Passengers and cargo travelled in the torus, crew in the cylinder.

From the departing, Mars-bound shuttle craft, Anderson Lovell could see the interplanetary spaceship in all its shabby grandeur, large enough to be impressive, old enough to be worn, important enough to have a "paint-job" annually. It cost too much to simply be abandoned and the intricate finances to replace it were not yet agreed.

Lovell bore the official title of an MJO investigative officer on assignment to Red Rock. In reality he was a UNION agent-nominee out to do a thorough research job into the sabotage attempts. His brief was to delve into the background, organisation, systems and personalities of the Martian base, in addition to the explosive sabotage.

'Attention please, attention please,' said a hidden speaker, which then repeated the phrase in seven languages, of which Lovell recognised only French and German.

'We are about to enter the Martian atmosphere. For your safety please lock you retaining stanchion in place. Those of you with window seats -' all six passengers in fact '- may look down as we begin our descent. You will see the stunning Martian landscape, marvel at exotic hues and colours and thrill to the many marvellous sights.'

Lovell began to wonder at the attitude of the pilot, coming over sarcastic like that. He peered out of his window, looking at the light side of the demarcator, as the surface expanded away in all directions, Red Rock becoming faintly visible. Clusters of domes, stellate interconnecting walkways, submerged corridors. A large block of lights blinking rhythmically with the phi effect showed where shuttles landed. Near to that, too near in the opinion of Lovell, were the swelling tops of liquid fuel tanks. As they dropped lower still, more details became visible, like the lights shining from semi-polarised windows.

All anti-climactic. Millions of miles from Earth with just this to travel to. Even if most of Red Rock was buried underground there seemed precious little to show for the trillions invested there. So much of gross national product world-wide had been poured into Red Rock that it was said war had been rendered impossible for decades afterwards, due to fiscal depletion.

The shuttle grounded with a thump.

'Okay, here we are. Welcome to Mars. Enjoy your stay because once we leave, that's it, you're stuck here.'

The speaker sounded bored. Understandable really, after their tedious journey across the depths of interstellar space, a process what had no romance to it so far as Lovell could see. Everything aboard the ship was carried out by computer with the crew acting in a supervisory role, intervening only rarely when things went wrong. The entire passage was a far cry from the wonderful special effects "hyperspace" trips taken by space travellers in films.

Releasing his retaining stanchion, Lovell straightened up, hearing his knees crack loudly. A stewardess, face carefully rendered symmetrical by surgery, stalked down the aisle, smiling broadly at each passenger. She ferried them all to the egress port and outside.

Lovell took his first step onto the soil of an alien world and found it hard and unyielding - because he stood on plastic flooring rather than Martian ground. The flooring was past of a corridor, very brightly lit and glaring white. Another anticlimax for Lovell, who discovered that a corridor on Mars looked much like a corridor anywhere else.

A dark-skinned man, possibly Indochinese, waited at the entry gate for arrivals from Earth in order to greet them personally. He shook hands with them all while they crossed the light barrier and underwent sterilisation. It may have been the Antiguan's imagination, but he thought that the man shook his hand with unusual force.

The man, Bhatacharjee by name and Indian by origin, explained that one of the hardest things to come to terms with about Mars was the sheer ordinariness of the indoors environment. As Lovell had already experienced, an enclosed room felt and looked like an enclosed room anywhere with only the perceived change in body weight to remind one of just where you were - and the mind and body soon adjusted to the difference in weight.

18) Crocodile Tears

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

AUSTIN

TEXAS

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In order to present the common touch, Senator McClusky had been moved into the Eisenhower Memorial Hospital. The media were informed about his tenure in FedCon Wing ("for obvious reasons details about the ward cannot be disclosed"), but were not told that in fact Room 616 was a private suite, attended by a private doctor, two private nurses, guarded by a rota of two officers from the Lone Star Guard, catered by McClusky's own personal chef and bugged by the FBI. Latter point unknown but suspected by the ever suspicious senator. The common touch was strictly for public consumption; McClusky actually held sway in a one-room domain where he ruled as best he could, injuries allowing.

Those injuries were relatively minor if one considered that the senator had been shot; broken ribs, extensive bruising, a fractured cheekbone where he'd hit the steps. Cheyne probably considered himself less fortunate, since he was dead, having been hit above the right eye by a bullet and killed instantly. Cordman and Stone escaped unscathed, as did the mystery assassin.

It was all a construction, of course, carefully planned by Cordman to divert, placate, stall and halt an Ethics Committee investigation of his superior. Four earlier investigations of McClusky came to naught, abruptly halted when Committee members discovered themselves mysteriously targeted by assassins, blackmailers, IRS, or simply disappeared outright. Nothing came back to McClusky, or his people, but the message was clear - if you investigated him, your life and career were both in danger.

However, Senator Orde was a persistent and determined opponent with a formidable bloc behind him. They prevailed upon the President to order the direction of the Ethics Committee's spotlight upon McClusky for a fifth time, following that Senator's recruitment of an infiltrating "weak link". This weak link, one Ralph Quillan by name, worked for Orde. His brief was to obtain dirt on McClusky by any means possible and effectively this meant involvement in what were called "paralegal" activities of McClusky's office. Many senators indulged in such business, since they needed to raise capital in large amounts for patronage, promotions, exclusions and all the unofficial debits involved in senatorial work. Voluntary contributions had dried up long ago under the detested State of Emergency and the insularity it ushered in. Mad Jack needed more income than most, since he was the sponsor of the Lone Star Guard to the tune of ten million dollars per year. His main paralegal prop consisted of large-scale importation of drugs from across the Mexican border (sweet irony). How did McClusky rationalise his drug-running activities? To answer that one would need to understand the mental processes of the man, and no-one did. The government agencies looked on drug-smuggling with ambivalent eyes; yes it was illegal, yes, it funded organised crime, but it also kept the inner cities quieter and more docile and lessened the number of anti-Emergency riots. Other senators carried out their own, equally schizophrenic schemes: Murdoch owned a string of Californian porn parlours (illegal since he came from Nevada), Wisbech had false holding companies trading with FedCon states, even the President, it was rumoured, has a dark, secret operation funding him.

The mystery assassin was Arnold Pressman, a member of Mad Jack's personal entourage, a man Cordman could trust for the job. When Pressman turned up at the pre-arranged rendezvous for payment, Sergeant Stone gave him a surprise present instead, a short burst of gunfire to the head. This apparently motiveless slaying went hand in glove with the assassination attempt on Mad Jack. Expertly manipulated by Dave Cordman, the press and television were able to get bedside footage and coverage of Senator Jack McClusky recovering from surgery. The injured man's brave responses came from careful rehearsal and an autocue.

'Who shot me? Damned if I know, gentlemen. I surely wish I did, then I could return the favour.'

'Have I any ideas about their identity? Well, they sure as hell weren't from the IRS, were they! That was a joke, if the IRS get to hear it. Play safe with those guys, eh?

'Dick Cheyne? Yeah, they told me. Arnie Pressman? No, that I didn't know. Jesus Mary and Joseph, what is this, open season on my staff? Do the rest of them have protection?'

Shortly after the above conversation was broadcast on prime-time national television Senator Orde put a call through to the Ethics Committee chair, even if such an action could bring severe penalties. Whatever the Senator heard didn't please him at all, because he threw his handset brutally at the wall.

Later that same day a known homosexual senatorial aide was found beaten to death in a Nevada hotel room. Also dead in the same room, a needle of pure heroin still stuck in a vein, was a comedian well-known in Chicago.

19) North of Transplutonia

BADFORT TOWERS

LONDON

OCTOBER

Alex returned to his apartment from Germany, feeling vaguely depressed that he and Olukaside were now removed from the Lothar-Theo case. Olukaside considerately warned him about this phenomenon; possibly the most annoying thing about working for UNION was not being able to follow a case to conclusion, since national agencies of member states within FedCon tended to intervene and take over. After that, need-to-know kept matters cloaked in secrecy and it took patience, time and influence to find out what happened in the end, if everyone lived happily ever after, and for most work it simply wasn't worth the time to investigate.

Once he opened the apartment door Alex knew there had been a change. When he entered the living room he discovered just what; his telescope had gone. Nor was the computer sitting on his desk the same one he had left sitting there; instead it was a newer, more expensive model, doubtless minus Alex's painstakingly acquired chess games. UNION action.

Shit, thought the Serb, dropping into a comfortable chair. Thanks for asking me about that, UNION. Another wonderful aspect of the job, one that really brought home the fact that he worked as a spy in an organisation of spies. Picking up a remote handset he recalled the incoming message-dump on his phone. Nothing of interest there, so he went to make a cup of tea, hoping that his much-prized Min hadn't gone the way of telescope and computer. What he needed was company, and also milk.

There lay the rub. Since this was a secure dwelling you couldn't simply invite friends up on a whim. And - Alex lived kilometres out in the suburbs. He'd have to go to company rather than have it come to him.

His ankle hurt, so he rubbed it mindlessly for a few minutes, where the Zap Gun pressed into it ever since Customs had reluctantly returned it to him at Dover. He threw the weapon onto the three-seater and turned on the wall viewer.

Newschannel appeared, giving an economics review of the past quarter that scrolled upwards with lots of charts and diagrams, complete with pauses for hard copy offtakes. Alex frowned and killed the sound, remembering his days of practicing formal English by listening to Newschannel and the received pronunciation of its staff.

Aha! He thought, remembered his mail box, unemptied since he walked in. When he checked there was only one item, a message disk without a label (but a mysterious writer had scribbled "Play me!" on it).

'Good day, citizen,' said an animated face when the disk got played. The androgynous, anonymous, flawless and perfectly symmetrical face must be an animation, surely? Nor was Alex Petrovic a citizen of anywhere whilst he served in FedCon, so the disk had that wrong from the start. 'You have been specially selected for a mission, due to your special qualifications -'

Oh yes? pondered Alex with not a little suspicion, and what qualifications might those be?

'- for detailed hard copy please press F1, thank you. Remember that this is also a one-shot erase-as-it-plays disk and what you have heard will be gone forever. Good luck.'

Pressing F1 brought reams of print rolling out of the unit.

They must want me to complete an encyclopaedia … He read on. No, they wanted him to go to Moldavia.

'Moldavia!' guffawed Neil, almost blowing beer down his nose. 'Also known as the armpit of Europe.'

As far as Neil and Eric knew, Alex now worked as a relief officer of the MJO and had been required to travel abroad. Privately Neil doubted this cover, but when he started to question his friend a little more deeply, the Serb's eyes narrowed slightly, even if the smile remained. Neil, untypically, took the hint and stopped asking.

'It is supposed to be a little er, backward, out there, yes,' added Eric. '"Under-resourced" is the current phrase.'

Alex popped another can of beer.

'I have to check institutions dealing with orphaned children. Orphans. Children. Christ Risen, what I don't know about stray kids would fill volumes. I'm not married - despite Mama's best attempts - so I know nothing about children.'

The sound of "Mama" set Neil off again, since the word seemed so incongruous. Eric stared at each of them in turn, a little bewildered. Then he shrugged and took anther sip of beer.

Alex had earlier decided to abandon his apartment for the evening. It felt like a prison cell, designed to keep him in as much as keeping others out; you couldn't invite people around without an appointment and it didn't keep unwelcome visitors like UNION out.

'When do you leave?'

'Not straight away. If I leave on the shuttle to Belgrade I can see my family en route for a couple of hour, so I'm going late tomorrow on that. It'll be a surpise.'

'A what?'

'Surprise. I meant surprise. Shit, this beer is strong.'

Neil counted a dozen empty beer cans on the flooring, so inebria stalking amongst them wasn't unexpected. Eric decided to tune into the Adult Channel, which he did successfully via the remote, but he then dropped the device on the floor, where it bounced heavily and lay still. Neil swore heartily, Eric looking guiltily at him.

'Dickhead. You've set the anti-theft chip off now. We can't change channels now.' He explained to Alex that the set, second hand, came cheap because the remote, if handled roughly, would set the television working at full volume on the last channel selected for at least an hour. An anti-theft function.

'Look what's on! Blaster Squad. This is all your fault, Eric.'

Alex looked alternately morose then annoyed. "Blaster Squad" was a British home-grown entertainment, one of the ultra-violent cop shows that outlived their progenitors across the Atlantic; still enormously popular on this side. Nominally the programme in question lasted for thirty minutes of which the introduction and closing credits took up three minutes, adverts another three minutes, plot, characterisations, segues and landscapes took another four minutes. The remaining twenty minutes consisted of gunfire, killing, explosions and sudden death with a myriad variations every week. Alex detested the programme almost as much as "Pander'. To avoid watching it he borrowed a large towel from the kitchen and draped it over the screen.

Eventually their conversation trickled to an end under a combination of fatigue and alcohol. Pleading tiredness, Alex got to crash out in the living room, under an old quilt that Neil dug out from a deep chest. It felt strange to fall asleep in an unfamiliar room in the dark, under a slightly musty blanket.

To the later torment of Alex, his dream came as a minutely detailed reconstruction of one day as "La Loco Motiva" near Nuevo Laredo, less a dream than a video replay, exact in all details. Alex playing the part of a mysterious fourth-wall camera.

This time there were no other volunteers in the market square at dawn, just Alex and a battered Volvo 6 by 10, with incongruously bright patches over bullet-holes in the bodywork. The vehicle, named "La Loca", possessed a legendary ability to keep going under any circumstances; rain, mud, bullets, mist, bombs or plain bad driving meant nothing to it, despite (or even because) the self-guidance unit being a jury-rigged relic, a decade older than the truck.

Alex ambled over to a stall, where the holder was setting up, and bought a small melon for breakfast. Raw and sweet, it made his mouth pucker, even in the dream. It had to be a dream because there didn't seem to be any colour in the world.

'Hi and good morning to you. Can't you sleep?'

It was Lanfranc, a Canadian responsible for the FedCon administration in Camp Two. Because of his nationality and accent he had been treated with considerable distrust and dislike by the refugees, until his unstinting hard work and self-effacing nature won them over. Still, he must be a brave man, daring to work along a border where his accent, skin and way of speaking might mean being mistaken for an American and murdered. Alex felt respect rather than like for the man, but he was sincere about what he did, to the point of taking supplies when drivers were in short supply.

'No. Once I awaken up I do not be getting back to sleep again. What are you being doing at this time?' Back then his English had been a bit erratic.

'I'm looking for volunteers. And do you know, I just found one.'

This oblique reference didn't apply to Alex. A new arrival had come to replace Sienkiewicz (last heard of departing west with a stolen truck, a stolen gun and an under-age Mexican girl). Eager to please, this arriviste promptly volunteered to do driving duty, unaware of what it involved. Lanfranc had come hunting an experienced driver who would either dissuade or adopt their new assistant.

'Who are they, this new person?'

'An Irish guy called McDonaghy. Young, enthusiastic, cheerful -'

'Already I hate him,' complained Alex, only half joking, since he felt old, resigned and glum. Sudden embarrassment: the Irishman appeared from nowhere, out of thin air in very dreamlike fashion.

'Aha. How are you, Mack Don Agee?' asked Alex, not only embarrassed but unsure of how to pronounce this Celtic interloper's name.

'I'm fine, thanks. How's yourself, Mister -'

'Petrovic, pronounced with a "vich". Just call me Alex, it is easier. I hope you are all ready'

'Ready? Ready for what?'

Lanfranc put a paternal arm around McDonaghy's shoulder.

'More of that later. Alex, will you come over to my office?'

All three trekked over to Lanfranc's office, a small adobe-plastered demesne filled with elderly furniture old enough to fetch a fortune in any European antiques shop. Newly installed screens, printers and interfaces were starkly out of place in this setting, which could have come from a century ago. A large bar chart on one cluttered wall showed the current condition of various aspects of Camp Two: Supplies, Edible: Violet. Supplies, Non-Edible: Blue. Water: Blue. Transport, Rail: OUT; Air: OUT; Road: Red. Due to the American rolling sabotage programme the transport of supplies by road was difficult, impossible by rail and suicidal by air.

'Good news or bad news first? Okay, good it is. The Lone Star Guard are sending an honour guard to Dallas for a civic parade of some sort. That's a thousand or so less to worry about.'

'And the bad news?' prompted Alex. 'There is always bad news.' Not that it seemed the sort of thing he'd actually said, perhaps that meant he was dreaming.

''There always is bad news. As you know, that idiot from Manchester crashed the water tanker en route to Camp Three. We couldn't salvage it and the Lone Stars used it for target practice last night, so all that's left of it are two axles and a transmission shaft.'

'That's very interesting. And?'

'Camp Two is short of water. Short of food but shorter on water. We are going to load up La Loca with water blivets and run a mercy mission to our thirsty neighbours.'

McDonaghy visibly beamed, eager to make the run between camps instantly if that were possible. Alex and Lanfranc became aware of their novice's dash when they were all three loading ten-litre water blivets into the Volvo. The Irishman thumped the side of the cargo compartment with a meaty fist.

'Is this armour-plated?' he asked. 'Only I noticed the springs are low on it's suspension.'

Alex laughed out loud with grim, veteran amusement.

'No, no. Armour plating? I am afraid not! This is just sheet metal and the springs are low because the suspension is -how is it?'

'Screwed?' suggested Lanfranc, not seeing anything humorous.

'Exactly, yes, the suspension is screwed. We get a very bumpy ride in La Loca but she is fast. Armour plates would slow her down too much.'

'Couldn't you have just a little armour plate?'

Alex scowled.

'What do you think that this is the army! Christ Risen, we drive fast to miss the bullets, not slow to let them hit us.'

By now a few refugees with nothing else to do had gathered in the market square, watching the truck being loaded and the three strangers loading it. Alex went through a test of the vehicle, going so far as to run the engine for ten minutes. McDonaghy was appalled by the noise and smoke produced during the warm-up, to the amusement of Alex, who considered this morning's test to be quieter than usual.

Before allowing McDonaghy in to the cab, Alex stressed a few ground rules. One, do as you're told. Two, always keep moving. Three, if you're stopped for any reason at all, get out of the cab on the side opposite the Americans. Four, if you got out of the cab then take cover behind the road camber and keep crawling towards the nearest camp. There were all sorts of tales of people who didn't follow those rules and died from neglect.

Camp Two slowly came to life when Lanfranc stopped the loading and gave Alex a roster greenscreen to sign, a release form that said he departed freely and without duress, knowing the dangers the situation involved. McDonaghy signed too. The pair climbed up into the cab, Alex patting the St Christopher's medal Mama had sent him and which hung from the rear-view mirror. The Irishman looked curiously at his partner, then muttered a benediction and touched the medal himself. After all, he told himself, what harm can it do - a little good luck never goes amiss. There were other good luck charms, too - a crucifix wired to the radiator, a sprig of heather stapled to the back of the driver's seat, other medals that Mrs Petrovic had sent nestling in the glove compartment, the good wishes of Camp Two and "their" driver.

Lanfranc tapped on the driver's door. Alex rolled the window down.

'Which route are you taking? Any idea?'

Alex shrugged his shoulders. He considered it to be bad luck to decide or make a choice in advance, based on his past experience, and he was still in one piece.

Still warm from the test run, the Volvo's engine started first time, ticking over with an impressive rumble. Alex selected manual for the gears, then pulled his safety cradle down.

'Web in, we are going off.'

The trick was not to raise dust. Therefore, no harsh acceleration or wheel-spinning take off. Instead, a steady calm acceleration up to ninety.

'This is the easy part,' yelled Alex over the engine thunder. Almost straight away they left the metalled surface of the exit road and hit the track that now ran to Camp Three. McDonaghy stared in surprise at the potholed track that he knew to be a metalled road, on the maps at least. What he didn't know was that the contractors refused to risk American cross-border shooting in order to build the road, an omission that the cartographers, sadly, didn't know about. The track made for a punishing ride even with good suspension. For a weary old trouper like La Loca and anyone inside the journey felt much worse.

'Oof!' said McDonaghy. 'I hope it's not all like this.'

Only where it got worse was it any different. The driver didn't wish to waste his breath on redundant facts so he waited, thinking that time would tell, even if this happened to be dream. And, dreamlike, they were suddenly ten kilometres from Camp Two, the ridge that shielded them from American eyes gradually decreasing in height, letting the northern bank of the Rio Bravo come into view. This portion of track constituted the first dangerous stretch, where hostile observers could see any movement on the track from there onwards. The truck would remain in plain sight until they reached the Shooting Gallery. At that point the track divided in two, the better surfaced part leading up a small hill, the cruder path travelling behind the hill. It would have been an appropriate time to explain this if the Lone Star Guard had not intervened with their customary venom and vigour. An inverted cone of earth with a brief bright flash at its base leapt into the air, twenty metres ahead and just off the road edge.

'ARTILLERY!' yelled Alex, suddenly panicky. He braked sharply, his leg seeming to take an age to depress the pedal, then he dropped down a gear to accelerate better, weaving across the whole of the road while doing so.

One after the other, three explosions scarred the road behind the truck, the last being close enough for bits of dirt to rattle on their cab roof. Alex braked again, dropped two gears, then accelerated and braked in swift succession, using engine braking too. His passenger looked grimly ahead with one hand clutching the safety cradle and the other locked onto a door handle.

Another explosion, off towards the river bank, followed by another on the opposite side of the road, threw up more smoke and gravel. BANG! Went the off-side fender, causing McDonaghy to jump in fright and nearly leap out of the cab, but the collision was only with the remains of a burnt-out truck. Unable to see properly, Alex had clipped the rusty wreck in his haste.

Now came the worst part: The Shooting Gallery. Alex didn't let the fear surface to where it might become a threat, but he still worried enough for the two of them. He didn't take the turn-off, just carried on up the hill road, still erratically stamping the accelerator. Variation and inconsistency, that's what you needed to avoid being ranged by American predictor gunsights (craftsman constructed in Southern California).

With genuine dreamlike, aching slowness they crested the hill. Ahead a thin, smokey meander rose from an obliterated truck further down the track, the water-carrier carcass. Strangely, they were not under fire now; perhaps their tormentors had become bored, or run low on ammunition?

No! shouted Alex to himself as a mortar bomb, a nasty black-finned thing, plopped savagely into the track ahead. And stayed there, dud. Did this take place when he drove with McDonaghy the first time or could this be a dream?

Time didn't allow any manoeuvres. Having a high ground clearance, the Volvo thundered directly over the dormant projectile as the driver straightened his leg to get maximum leverage on the accelerator. If the bomb was a dud then it probably wouldn't go off and if it had a delay or trembler then the only escape was to outrun it.

It must have been faulty, decided Alex, because I'm still here thinking about it.

More express deliveries were fully functional and bracketed the track on both sides, so Alex left it for a short stretch, hammering the suspension further and punishing both occupants into the bargain. Then it was back onto the track with a sudden hush making their ears ring hollowly, a sign of blast pressure effects and an indirect warning about how close they came to being killed. Alex jinked once or twice before reaching the hill's downward sloped where the road zigzagged in slow, lazy bends.

'God Almighty!' yelled McDonaghy as they raced straight off the road, in an approximately straight line for the point, much further ahead, where the road became less wandering. He seemed more scared of his partner's driving than of the American ordnance.

A percussive crack made La Loca quiver momentarily and for a bleak second Alex thought a structural member had failed, until they reached the Gallery's end, by which time he realised that if there was a problem with the truck then it wasn't terminal.

On this stretch he kept their speed high, varying between eighty to a hundred and twenty. Better traction kicked this up by another five until La Loca suddenly skidded into the outskirts of Camp Three, it's croupy klaxon blaring in deserved triumph. Driving past the slums brought a sense of contradictory relief and grief to Alex, mingled in a way difficult to disentangle or explain, made worse by the irrationality of the dream.

When they rolled to a halt McDonaghy let out a painfully constrained sigh of relief, long held in suspense. Both driver and passenger jumped down from the cab without a word, McDonaghy feeling his knees give unexpectedly as he jumped down from the running board, but Alex, long experienced at such missions and feelings, stayed upright; his stomach was a clenched knot and there he had cramp in both shoulders, but he stayed upright.

Swarms of thirsty 'Canos came to collect water blivets handed out by supervisors from La Loca's read loading ramp. Alex noticed a small hole low down on the cargo compartment's nearside; he went around to the off-side and saw a much larger hole, edges splayed out in jagged flanges. Still curious, he peered into the rear, past a lone supervisor smoking a lone cigarillo. Yes, the two holes were opposite each other; a handful of empty water blivets lay on the floor in a puddle.

'You were lucky, man. The Virgin likes you, Mister Loco,' drawled the supervisor.

Alex nodded slowly. From the look of it, a Mexican soldier told him, an armour-piercing cannon shell had gone straight through the truck body; perhaps a tenth of a second sooner and it would have gone through the driver's cab and the driver.

'Thank God that's over,' exclaimed the Irishman. 'Your driving scares me - what?'

'It is not over. We have to go back. They need this truck at Camp Two.'

The dream faded into darkness.

POLICY STATEMENT

DRAFT 3

SECTION 3:2

1) When in transit it is established practice that FedCon employees will travel at the Most Economic Rate on the most economic mode of transport.

2) Due to existing transportation schedules, it will normally be expedient for FedCon employees to travel on previously organised FedCon transport.

3) Under exceptional circumstances it will become necessary for special arrangements to be made for the transport of personnel; wherever possible, FedCon transport will be utilised.

4) If during 2) above, it is not possible to procure FedCon transport then suitable, appropriate and alternative transport will be chartered from other sources (see Appendix 17 for list of Approved Sources)

There were no special flights this time for Alex, no, it was back to a more mundane level of operation and it showed. From London to Yugoslavia, he certainly didn't feel like driving the Khan all that way, then on to Moldavia, then returning again.

After checking through TACT he discovered a four vehicle convoy due to leave from London, bound for Kosovo with thirty tonnes of mixed white goods. Time was short, though. He had to get from Neil's home back to his own, sort out travelling arrangements and gear, get down to the appropriate vehicle park in South London and park before the convoy left - assuming that they would take him without quibbling.

'Morning. Coffee?' asked Neil, suddenly appearing from upstairs, clad in a remarkable garment that looked like exotic wrapping paper.

'Yes please. Black -'

'- with two sugars, yes, I know you by now.'

'You look like a Christmas present come early.'

Neil shouted in reply from the kitchen.

'It's a heater gown. You know, from the space-suit liners. It keeps you warm when the batteries are switched on..' He reappeared with two cups. 'Neat, HM? Saves turning on the central heating.'

Alex nodded. One of the less profound FedCon spin-offs that continually popped up as consumer products. Such as his prized German knife collection; mono-molecular lined blades, derived from German micro-engineering research.

The coffee burnt his tongue, which made him pay attention to the here and now. He finished the drink, then left, politely but rapidly.

He made it to, of all places, South London Sorting Office for the rendezvous with the trucks before they left, arriving by taxi. Expensive and necessary. He suffered a brief argument with the driver before he got a receipt, since he wanted to try and claim the cost as a legitimate travelling expense, all the while thinking that a secret spy never had to suffer such banal indignities in films.

There were now four trucks travelling to Kosovo, making eight drivers who had got together in a huddle to discuss matters. When they say their additional charge the discussion stopped and one driver greeted him.

'Hello! Are you this Russian fella? Going to Belgrave?'

'Yes. I am Serbian, actually.'

'Yeah, from Serbiria, right!'

The driver turned to his fellow truckers and announced "The Russian's arrived". Try as he might, Alex was never able to explain to them convincingly that Serbia was not a part of Russia. Memories were short in London, it seemed. Still, they were friendly enough and stowed his cases away in the blink of an eye.

Being a passenger, it was bad form to speak to the driver unless he talked to you first, so there were long periods of silence, since the relief driver slept whilst his comrade drove. Thus they passed rapidly through France, into Switzerland, then Italy and to the Yugoslav border with Slovenia. Rapid and efficient, the two-driver system, even if it meant little in the way of conversation. Pit stops were infrequent, limited to calls of nature, refuelling, food restocks and border checks. Alex came into his own when they drew up in the customs lane of the Yugoslav border post, each truck halted with motors stopped.

An officious patrolman in blue-gray uniform strolled up an alongside the lead vehicle, carrying a white baton tucked under one arm. He stopped, took the baton and used it to push the peaked cap back a little on his head; this appeared to be customs-official body language for "I am going to inspect you"

'Bloody hell. This one's going to be difficult. I can tell, you know, and the run's been dead easy so far,' grumbled the driver, a Cockney called Pete. He powered the window down.

'You are English, yes?'

'Yeah. English.'

'I am customs officer from Border Customs Inspectorate for this region. I am wanting to see your vehicle, also your papers.' He tapped the radiator grille with his baton. 'I am also meaning this thing. Car - wagon -' He swore briefly in Serbian, unhappy at having to converse in English.

'Hey, mate, no need to swear. What's the problem?' enquired Alex cheerfully in his mother tongue, to the considerable surprise and relief of the customs officer.

'Who are you - no, never mind, I won't ask. Look, what's going on here; all of a sudden four British trucks turn up out of nowhere. I'm curious.'

Alex shrugged.

'We're from FedCon, going all the way to beautiful Beogradska, that's all. We're carrying general office supplies. Terminals, cabling, interfaces, hard cards, that sort of stuff.'

The other cocked his head to one side quizzically.

'Well, I don't know. Oh, sod it, you've got an honest face and it's lunch time.' He switched back to English. 'Okay, you okay, go now.'

Pete expressed his surprise and satisfaction. Clever lad, coming from Russia and able to speak Yugoslav! If only he knew. Alex had spent every waking minute ever since his assignment came through, learning Romanian. He now possessed a limited vocabulary, some idiom and a good accent.

Since his last visit home there had been considerable rebuilding and reconstruction work in Belgrade, a lot of the ugly Revisionist architecture going under the demolition ball, to the extent that he failed to recognise certain districts that they passed through.

Ah, beautiful Beogradska, your least favourite son is back, he said to himself, also aloud in English.

Pete looked at him curiously.

'You lived here?'

'For eighteen years. Aha, look, there's the television tower. At least that's not changed. Look, could you drop me near the central bus terminal?'

Luckily the roads leading to the station had not changed overmuch and the expatriate was able to find his way there easily enough, guiding the trucks. Pete dropped him off, plus baggage, with a cheery wave, and each truck gave a loud blast on its horn as it rolled past.

'Take care, mate, you're a long way from home!' was Pete's parting line.

Alex could tell he was back in his homeland by the difference in people's attitudes; by now he had gotten used to the politeness and rule-following of the English, though the islanders didn't see themselves that way. Serbs and Belgradians by contrast were rude. Perhaps if he'd spoken English to them, they would have been politer.

'I'm busy. Get lost,' snapped the first bus driver he dared to approach.

'I screwed your wife last night,' riposted Alex tartly, getting into the swing of things straight away. The bus driver glared ferociously but couldn't leave his cab, busy taking fares from passengers. Eventually Alex found an information kiosk staffed by a surly attendant, who grudgingly let him have a bus timetable. Locating the correct bus wasn't easy; you had to take day, time, holiday, location and availability into account before going to the correct gate.

If this was Holland or England the info would all be on a voice-activated display board. Shit, we can put men on Mars but public transport is too difficult. Shit again, if this were England the bus would go on time and not pull out just as you got to the stand …

He interrupted his internal fuming to consult the timetable and caught the next bus, forty minutes later. It took over an hour to reach his family's housing project since the bus wandered over a meandering route. A few children threw stones when the passed into the Voivode estate. Eventually they reached the Trajanov project, a series of huge curving housing blocks. They were looking rather shabby, pondered Alex. No paint since last time I visited, in fact.

Paint might have been lacking but the symmetrically-laid flower beds were immaculately maintained, doubtless by the project's Flower and Plant committee (which seemed to consist of all the elderly residents).

The Petrovic flat was on Floor Three, low enough to avoid problems with stairs or lifts, high enough to avoid problems from vandals.

As usual, the lift didn't work. It hadn't worked the last time he came home, either. In fact there seemed to be a rule, in any country, that whenever a public housing project existed with stairs or lifts the lifts would be broken and the stairs would be awkward.

A middle-aged man wearing an equally aged homburg was descending the stairs while Alex ascended. They passed on a landing and nodded before moving on.

Just a minute, I know him, realised Alex.

The other stopped in mild astonishment and looked upward from the flight below.

'What? Do I know you?' Then he squinted. 'A minute, a minute. Ah! It's Mrs Petrovic's son, isn't it - Alexander. Well, well, home again, young voyager. Give my regards to your mother. Goodbye.' Off he went, at a nervous pace, remembering who Alexander worked for.

Alex walked along Floor Three to apartment Eighteen. His stomach flipped over briefly before he pressed the bell. It had been a long time since his last visit, which made for a little reflective nervousness.

The door swung open and a small, grey-haired woman with glasses and a worn face stood there.

'Mama!' shouted Alex, dropping his cases and giving her an arm-wrapping hug, kissing her on both cheeks. She gasped as he squeezed the air out of her lungs.

'Alexander Dragan! Oof, put me down, you don't know your own strength. When did you arrive in the city? Are you staying? You should have called to tell me you were coming. Why didn't you call from the airport?'

Throwing up his hands to fend off this barrage of questions, Alex managed to get into the apartment. His mother led him into the kitchen. Kitchen and dining room combined, really, the largest single room of the whole apartment. Branko used to make his models there, Katerina still did her homework on the table, Zdanko played card games at the weekend with friends from the AeroFabrik (though he made sure the slivovitz and cigarette butts were gone by morning).

Zdanko sat at the table now, eating a pastry and drinking some coffee.

'Hello there,' said Alex politely. He and elder brother didn't get on, hadn't done so for a decade. Zdanko nodded politely in reply, carrying on eating and drinking.

'You wait here, Alexander, Ante is upstairs, I'll go and get him for you.'

Alex sat down at the table. Much to his surprise Zdanko poured him a cup of ersatz coffee instead of ignoring him.

'Ta - I mean, thanks. Are you still living here? I heard you'd moved out.'

That earned him a scowl.

'Cheeky little bugger! Yes, I have moved out but I come here for lunch from the AeroFabrik. If Mama needs any odd jobs doing then I help her.'

Alex waved the barbed riposte away, took a sip of coffee and looked around as another person bounded into the room.

'Hello stranger! You're looking old!' That was Ante, making his usual abrupt entrance. The two brothers shook hands and embraced.

'You watch your mouth, Ante Milos,' said their mother, hitting him smartly on the back of the head.

'Ow! Pack it in, Mum, it's just a joke, he can take it. Hey, how long are you staying - are you on leave from FedCon?'

'No, I can't stay long. I'm on assignment to Moldavia so this is only a flying visit. I have to catch a shuttle flight out of Belgrade to get there. Hey, just a minute, what do you mean, "old"? Twenty eight's not old!'

'It comes to us all,' commented Zdanko, drily.

'How's college going for you. No compulsory conscription yet, I hope.'

A pained silence fell for a second or so. Even now, over a decade after a bitterly reluctant Alexander entered the army, the subject could still raise hackles.

'Er, they can defer it for three years, now,' mumbled Ante. Mama saved the day by providing a plate of honey biscuits, which she knew Alex dearly liked and couldn't find in London.

Ante ran like a fountain with a constant stream of questions about life in England. Partly this was due to their long separation, partly due to the younger Petrovic's boundless curiosity, partly due to Alex's reluctance to go into detail about his host country. Zdanko waited until Mama left to do some unavoidable chores upstairs, amongst which was probably making Ante's bed, then he leaned over and hissed at Alex.

'Don't go filling his head with bloody rubbish about how wonderful your job it, you stupid ass. You had enough trouble when you joined the Concordat, didn't you? Well, didn't you!'

True. Alex found the hard way that, once you had worked for the FedCon, it was difficult to obtain employment outside it, owing to the innate suspicion of employers and governments in respect of potential loyalty.

Ante put his view forward.

'I don't want to join up. Not yet, anyway. And I want to get onto the Applied Biophysics course at the university, so I'd never join up until after that.'

His elder brothers harrumphed at him in chorus.

Unfortunately Katerina was at college and wouldn't be home in time to see Alex before he left; Branko was still at work and wouldn't be home until at least six, so Mama brought Alex up to date with information about his brother and sister.

Come time to leave, Mama left to get a bottle of vodka from the freezer, jogging her son's memory - he had several presents brought all the way from England, which he might otherwise have forgotten to unpack. There was a copy of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" in English for Katerina, a black plastic construction kit of the MoonDog for Branko, a Welsh lace shawl for Mama, a state-of-the-art Swiss calculator for Ante ("too cool!"), a bag of best Dutch rolling tobacco for Zdanko. Alex also broke the news about future royalties from his sole publication: there wouldn't be any more since (white lie) FedCon had decided that it had been naughty of him to keep money from a pre-Contract source without having declared it in full. So, no more monies. To sweeten the pill he promised to try and be home for Christmas, although he couldn't guarantee that because he might end up doing emergency cover.

Zdanko saw him out of the flat, to the landing of Floor Three, Alex expecting a critical shaft upon departure.

'Watch yourself in Belgrade. They called out the army to keep the streets controlled and some of them are still there, so be careful. They're mostly in the centre.'

An embarrassed pause fell, as if the sentence hadn't finished yet.

'Look, I know we've never got on, Big Brother acting the father and all that, but until last year no-one mentioned the royalties to me. Mama never told me.'

Alex looked curiously at his older brother.

'How d'you think she could afford the apartment and still send Katerina and Ante to college?'

The other shrugged.

'I thought it was Dad's pension. I was wrong. Look, what I'm trying to say - I'm not doing this too well - I'm grateful for what you did, I thought you'd just disappeared abroad to have a good time and forget about the family. Shake.'

For the first time Alex could remember, they shook hands. A strange feeling, reconciliation with his brother. Not unwelcome, but definitely strange and it stuck in his mind on the bus back into Belgrade.

As recounted, there were army units out on the streets, clustered especially at street corners with plastic shields and shock sticks, loitering with casual, bored attitudes, still looking for student rowdies to baton. Nevertheless, everyday affairs still seemed to be rolling along much as usual; there was even a gypsy band playing outside the central bus station as there had been every other time when Alex visited Belgrade. Accordion, violins, double bass and a guitar; an opened violin case lay in front of them filled with dinars of every denomination. Since he had to pass by them to get on the airport bus Alex threw them all the loose change he had - he didn't want to take any Yugoslav currency into Moldavia. A violinist bowed to him and the band inserted a flurry of chords into their song as a thank you.

Because the airport bus would be seen by international travellers at the terminal it was a well-maintained air-cushion vehicle, all polished chrome and immaculate mock-leather upholstery, quite a difference from the tired workhorse that plied the Trajanov estate. The stewardess who warmly but insincerely greeted each passenger lacked the symmetrical surgery that was so beloved of major service enterprises in Western Europe. Good. A human touch.

The bus waited for quarter of an hour after its departure time to allow any laggards to arrive, because those using it to travel to the airport were likely to be foreigners, tourists, businessmen and the like, all with lots of nice foreign currency that needed to be spent. If they weren't looked after then they might not come back next time, and if they were late then they had probably been spending their money.

Incorporated into the seat back facing Alex was a flat-screen, showing a melodramatic soap opera with bad actors and bad acting. Crap, judged Alex. All that wonderful technology being used for a dismal soap. Well, it could be worse, it could be Pander.

The stewardess wondered why one of the passengers punched off his video screen later when that new British program started.

Alex reported to the FedCon office maintained in Novi Bucuresti, where several branches of the organisation were represented on different floors.

Up on Floor Four: the Mandated Judicial Overview office. A clerk ushered Alex into a sparse room, where he faced a woman sitting stark upright behind a desk. She had piercing, angry eyes.

'Flexibility!' she snapped. Sparks almost shot out of those angry eyes.

'Pardon?' asked Alex, at a loss for a second or so.

'Flexibility, that's the word, that's what we need. Do you have flexibility?'

'Why - my nickname is Mister Flexible,' replied Alex firmly, playing a part.

The woman opened a desk drawer and produced a ziplocked police evidence bag, full of magazines.

'Then take a look at these. Here's a bag if you feel sick.'


	7. Chapter 7

Ecce Picoscopic

KRASNIY KAMENIEV/RED ROCK

MARS

EARTH RELATIVE OCTOBER 10TH

Lovell made himself comfortable in one of the sub-Martian rooms provided for him. It had belonged to one of the dead, killed when the rec dome depressurised, killed by asphyxiation, blast, debris and exsanguination. They allocated the room to him deliberately, too; perhaps the Red Rock establishment were sending a not-too-subtle message to him. Like, don't stay.

Overall, Red Rock came as a considerable disappointment to Lovell. After a few days one's internal regimen adapted to lower gravity and you noticed nothing exotic within the complex; after all, a windowless room was simply a windowless room, and there were plenty of those back on Earth. To even get a hint of an alien vista, you needed to go peer out from one of the portholes in a rec dome to see Mars in its natural state. When Lovell suggested a trip outside the reaction of Griskiewicz had been unfeigned horror: let an untrained, inexperienced novice loose on the Martian surface in an EVA suit that cost upwards of ten million, to contend with reactive soil, friable rock strata, gas pockets, radiation, rockfalls, gravity euphoria, disorientation - no! No! and NO again!

In part of his introductory routine Lovell had thoroughly explored the layout of Red Rock, making sure that people got to see him while he saw them, so he became less of a stranger. One of the first sites on his visit was Chamber Six, the destroyed rec dome. All that remained visible - indeed, almost the only thing that remained - of Chamber Six was the door, and that was sealed off. There were camera stills that showed what remained on the other side of that sealed door: the flooring, covered with dust, jagged pieces of wall curving up from the floor like discoloured fangs, a few broken bits of furniture deemed not worth salvaging. There were also camera stills of the victims, gruesome mortuary relics that he skimmed over quickly.

Another priority venue was the plant room ante-chamber. Before the explosion it had been a small room two metres by three metres with a powered sliding door at each end. People entered via one door, then left via the other into the reactor room. Scanners and suction vents ensured that no contaminants entered or left the plant room. _Had_ ensured. For the time being, as a stop-gap measure, a plastic see-through portable airlock stood installed inside the plant room to prevent contamination. Lovell could therefore see the damage caused to the plant room. Both ante-chamber doors had been blown outwards, the one leading into the plant room torn out of its runners and thrown across the floor, ricocheting off a supply conduit en route. The blast had damaged a control panel, which bulged and split, looking embarrassed. Inside the ante room the walls were buckled and split along weld seams; burnt insulation hung dead from loose panels, equally dead wiring dangled flaccidly. Lovell judged that if the detonation were to have taken place in the reactor room then the damage would have been far worse, possibly rendering the whole power generating process impossible.

After three days, to Bhatacharjee's mixed relief and chagrin, Lovell convened a meeting, which he wanted Prue, Griskiewicz and De Huys - the police division head - to attend. They would review evidence gathered so far. The Indian did not look forward to it. He knew from the cargo manifest that Lovell had brought a collection of specialist data-analysis electronics with him, but apart from that Anderson remained a mystery to him. One could conjecture that, since the Antiguan was here on Mars, he had a certain talent for investigation. FedCon wouldn't waste a million marks transporting a non-specialists to Mars, would they? If having FedCon breathing down his neck in the form of Anderson Lovell meant the whole messy, bizarre business got resolved quicker then Bhatacharjee would be happier. Though he'd still feel happier if he knew just what the meeting would cover.

Later, when all four had sat down in Bhatacharjee's personal quarters, Lovell asked for the door to be locked and all transmission sources turned off. His demeanour was curious and implied secret knowledge, spurring all present to wonder what that secret might be.

'Sorry for the delay,' apologised the agent. He presided over a number of black boxes wired together, plugged into a viewing screen and connected to a hand-console with attached microphone. He was having a little trouble making sure all these components were compatible since typically there hadn't been any trouble when he used the equipment himself, but at a public demonstration things went awry.

Finally Lovell felt satisfied. He too sat and handed out a fax with printed details of the presentation.

'I have to say, firstly, that my investigation was solely into the recent accident here, Mister Bhatacharjee. My brief extended no further than that. You might be a little less anxious with that in mind.

'Secondly, my results are due to having the latest electronic gear -' and here he waved a hand at his electronic hardware '- which I brought specifically because Red Rock is seen as being so important. The black boxes consist of Finnish forensic hardware and a British picoscopic analyser package.'

De Huys made a cynical moue.

'Very expensive. Very intricate,' he intoned. "Envy" said his expression.

Lovell stared at the man, wanting to add that the equipment was very difficult to use, even though he had spent the long months of the journey from Earth learning to use it.

'I'm going to channel input from the set and run it into the wall screen. That way we can all see.The wall screen was genuine wall-sized display screen, with an accompanying "laser" pointer for didactic patrons. When the disks began to play, the screen flashed up subliminal dates and times. Then came the actual footage (Imperial terms still in use) of events in Chamber Six. No sound since it was deemed un-necessary in a routine recording, no colour because monochrome was cheaper and easier to record. The view came from overhead because the camera had been placed at the chamber's apex alongside the lighting where it would be least obvious, giving a fish-eye perspective.

The panorama showed people sitting at tables, playing a game of cards, reading microfilmed books; occasionally a person entered, their head looming and receding under the lens. Two people stood at a table waving angrily at each other in apparent silence. One stood up and stamped out. Perfectly normal off-duty Martian behaviour. One man lay on the floor staring at the ceiling, and another stood staring out of a porthole at the Martian terrain. Once again, normal off-duty Martian behaviour.

This sequence ran until Lovell felt sure everyone was accustomed to its normality. He then paused the disk and pointed out the rather obvious fact that nothing was going on. Once the disk re-started they saw the prostrate man abruptly get up and walk out; as he did so he bumped into another, incoming person. The locking doors powered themselves shut behind the departee.

'That last was Halloran, going out. Lucky lad. He missed it by a whisker.'

They all watched the last entrant remain standing by the doors. De Huys recognised the man as Calvino. Again, for long, boring seconds, nothing happened. Then, no warning, a sudden flash obscured the view. When it cleared clouds of debris were scudding outwards into the Martian atmosphere, bodies threshed on the floor, the chamber walls were shattered and of Calvino - no trace remained. Nor was the camera unaffected. Gradually the after-effects of blast and decompression stripped away the chamber walls until the video lost its support and began showing images of sky, then ground and nothing at all.

'The camera got picked up ten meters from the dome but fortunately the disks were still whole and integral. Now I'm going to re-run it with the data analysers switched on.'

From a grainy monochrome image the video suddenly became cuttingly clear. Lovell demonstrated how capable the equipment was by carrying out an internal zoom on the card players, then panning across to the previously mentioned Halloran and tracking across his face.

'Look at those pupils,' muttered De Huys, professionally interested.

From that frozen frame the video forwarded to the point when Halloran rose and made ready to leave. There Lovell left the disk, paused, for a tangential discussion.

'Why did you suspect an internal explosion caused the damage, and what made you suspect that Calvino was the culprit?'

A short silence. Then a short discussion.

'Deduction,' replied Bhatacharjee. 'Over the whole history of Red Rock there have been only four disasters like this one. None were design flaws or externally influenced, they were all caused by an explosion within a dome. Their design, you see, makes them invulnerable to everything except such an event. The last one was a bottle heater with a fault, I believe.'

'And Calvino?'

'More deduction. Nothing happened until he entered the room, the blast took place where he stood, and, unlike other victims, there wasn't anything left of him to recover.

Lovell nodded. He then changed the disks in the playback unit.

'I'm playing the footage we have of Grice in the reactor section. Obviously there were more cameras there, so we have more recordings. I've copied relevant sections onto one disk. My apologies if you've been through this one before.'

Once again the black and white video tones sprang into life, showing an overhead view of a secure door. This was a solidly-built, inter-leaved access point, guarded by one of De Huys police force. Staff could enter only if the policeman was satisfied about their legitimacy.

Grice, seen from above, abruptly arrived in front of the guard and without hesitation drew a length of heavy piping from his jacket and clubbed the unfortunate warden to the floor. Such was the severity of the assault that both piping and police helmet were fractured (a sequence that made Bhatacharjee wince whenever he witnessed it). The aggressor reached down and pulled hard at his victim's uniform, ripping free a smart-card that he placed in the relevant wall slot. Obediently the door rolled open.

Lovell stopped the image temporarily at that point, indicating the wall slot with his pointer.

'Point of interest number one. Grice stole this card to use but he couldn't have known that it has an underlying code; if it is used with a different thumbprint from the user's a 999 code is entered and broadcast.'

De Huys nodded in agreement. The warden's card should not have opened the door, but it had. Only the warning function worked successfully, alerting those in the reactor complex.

Lovell started his display running again, which changed to show another overhead view. This view came from inside the reactor complex; two nervous guards could be seen, each holding a pistol, two of the twelve legally licenced guns within Red Rock now pointed at the entrance doorway where Grice stood. A strobe epi-alarm pulsed at the renegade, hopefully to incapacitate him, though in real life it had no effect. Grice started towards the ante-room door.

Red Rock used both liquid and solid fuel as emergency reserves and to power it's Rover vehicles, used in exploration, but power for the complex came from three fusion reactors (a mere fraction of the necessary came from solar panels). They had been installed recently as the size of Krasniy Kamenev increased. All residents on Mars were aware of the dangerous and paradoxical nature of their power source, being their only sole life-support and potentially able to fatally contaminate one thousand times over. Net result: armed guards stood watch over the reactor complex with standing orders to use whatever force they considered necessary to prevent damage, wilful or not. Nobody without a smart card was allowed to enter; those who arrived had to wait for processing; once through that an escort showed arrivals into the reactor section.

None of which procedure Grice had followed, so he was promptly shot while he ran, by both his fellow--workers. He didn't even slow down. One policeman lowered his gun in disbelief, the other kept on shooting whilst Grice raced into the ante-chamber and pressed a button to close the door. Once more the video view changed to an overhead shot, from a camera set into the ceiling of the ante-room. Grice managed to enter the small room whilst bullets thudded dully into it, but he failed to shut the door completely. Then he simply stood, in the middle of the floor.

As happened in Chamber Three, there was a brief, intense flash and debris filled the room.

Again the view changed, this time from a camera opposite the ante-room door, within the reactor room. Nothing happened for strained seconds. Then, as two technicians walked past, the door silently burst out of it's sockets in a storm of dust and smoke; it cannoned into the passers-by, carried on and bounced off a humpback reactor housing, careered high in the air and embedded itself in a control console. Sparks flared briefly for a few seconds. The most disconcerting part of the whole sequence was that it took place in total silence.

'All au fait?' asked Lovell. 'You ought to be, you've seen this a dozen times. Now, I'm going to run it again, but enhance this time.

'Okay, this is Interesting Anomaly Number One, where the smart card opens a door that ought to stay shut. Nobody has yet suggested a convincing explanation for it, barring divine intervention.'

Griskiewicz frowned heavily.

'What is the chance of this happening by chance?' he asked.

Lovell shrugged. As he understood if from his own background knowledge and calculations provided by a Red Rock electronics expert, the chances were of the order of once per universe lifetime.

'A gruesome bit here. Grice got shot eleven times at point blank range. He wasn't noticeably slowed down - not even carrying all that extra weight, as a policeman said.'

De Huys felt obliged to point out that his small police force used "Squash Head" bullets that were guaranteed not to go through sensitive structures like pressure dome walls but which were conversely guaranteed to make a mess of people. Grice excepted.

'Notice how the smart-card also works on the ante-room door, where it shouldn't.'

Lovell turned off the display temporarily to summarise the forensic findings and what they had all witnessed so far.

Item: Grice and Calvino were responsible for the explosions but their modus operandi remained unknown. Also, as was seen from the disks time track, both explosions took place at the same time, to within tenths of a second of each other.

Item: nobody noticed anything remotely odd about the two kamikazes before their coeval suicides. Nor were there any suicide notes or any other explanations, nor had their weekly psychology tests revealed anything untoward.

Item: the highly sensitive and accurate "sniffers" in the reactor room failed to detect any trace of explosive substances.

Conjecture: both were participants in a planned, deliberate act of self-destruction.

Lovell carried on, explaining that he had been very unhappy about the lack of any trace of explosive substance, so he went backward over the critical frames again. Each frame was resolved and enhanced, enlarged and analysed. Lovell had been surprised at his end result, and unpleasantly surprised. When he returned to the forensic results his surprise turned to perplexity.

21) Tables Overturned

BRANCUSI INSTITUTION

NOVI BUCURESTI

OCTOBER 10

Constantin strolled down the corridor towards the East Wing, swinging his collection of MagIC keys on their sealed loop. He was due to meet Doctor Buttel to help with one of the schizophrenic children who didn't respond to chemotherapy, but he was early and didn't want to rush. It could be grim work, helping to restrain a child who behaved like a little demon; then again it was equally unpleasant to see one of them lying there like a human cabbage.

A cleaner pushed a mop around further down the corridor, so Constantin stopped for a quick time-wasting chat with him.

'Hello.'

The cleaner stopped moving his piece of equipment backwards and forwards over the same piece of floor, took a cigarette from behind one ear and lit it. He stuck one hand in a pocket and nodded.

'Non-tobacco,' he said, pointing at the cigarette. 'Machorka. Off to lock 'em up, are you?'

Constantin laughed, a little embarrassed.

'No, no, not at all. They want me to help with one of the kiddies who needs holding down. They can get a bit upset.'

The cleaner nodded sagely.

'Oh aye, you're a big bloke. Do they need a bloke big as you to hold down a child?'

Constantin frowned. There seemed to be an air of criticism in the question.

'You'd be surprised how strong they can get when they go berserk, friend. I don't beat them up, if that's what you mean.'

The cleaner just went "aha" , puffing away at his cigarette. Constantin turned to go, feeling a strange unease at being talked at in such a way. He turned back to the cleaner but the man ignorantly returned to his cleaning, oblivious to anything else, so Constantin had no chance to restate his view.

The "restraining" turned out to be extremely unpleasant, with the child flailing, screaming, biting and kicking while Doctor Buttel tried to carry out the assessment. Instead of fifteen minutes it took an hour, at the end of which Buttel still looked surprisingly pleased. He carefully replaced the extracting syrette in its protective case and labelled each of the phials with their extract type.

'Good! Good!' he beamed. 'Much better!'

Better than what, wondered Constantin. The German doctor wasn't too hot on his Slavic, tending to break into excitable German if he didn't concentrate.

After saying goodbye to the cheerful doctor (who most staff were convinced was not entirely sane) Constantin made a tour of the North Wing. Because he spent far longer on the assessment than usual he was late for his rounds, which meant that he waited until mid-afternoon for his lunch. His stomach protested loudly at this imposition. Still, he remained professionally watchful and cheerful whilst patrolling the various wards and dayrooms, inspecting children at play and work. He intervened only once, to break up a squabble between two girls and a boy, using his considerable bulk to counterpoise his gentle manner. After that he returned to the canteen via the central Admin block to snatch a quick cup of coffee and a sandwich. A group of cleaners were playing cards at a table with considerable if muted cursing; apart from that he had the whole place to himself. Soon the cleaners left and he sat alone, only his thoughts for company. They weren't much, as companions went; his thoughts went continually to his wife, Jarmila, whom he hadn't seen all day and wouldn't see for another day yet. That was the big drawback of semi-residential shift work, big wages but unsocial hours. The kids at home always asked where he was if he didn't greet them at least once per day. Well, they needed the money for a new house, so he had little choice but to carry on with the slogging work - Jarmila stayed at home to look after the children so they only had the one wage coming in. He sighed deeply, glad that there were no others to hear him, feeling that at least his work here had social merit, he could be stuck in an office shuffling paper all day instead of raising the quality of life of these orphans.

Constantin had started work at ten that morning and, after taking lunch and coffee-breaks, wasn't due to finish until midnight. It was a long shift, but not one of the harder ones to work since at night the children were asleep and much less restive. Potential adopters usually came to collect their charges during night shifts for the same reason.

Before departure he needed to make out a report on the day's assessment with Doctor Buttel, his rounds on the wards, dayrooms and dormitories, any complaints or protests that staff entered and, because it was the end of the administrative month, the state of the Institute's stocks, stores and structure. Having completed this mind-numbing chore, he felt like a stroll. He was off-duty yet didn't mind an extra ten minutes or so examining "his" buildings and the orphans within them.

As expected, all stood quiet, with the Institute's secondary lighting on in corridors to save power. Constantin stuck his head around a ward entrance and nodded at the nurse on duty there. She frowned back, until she recognised him and came over.

'What's up, Monitor?'

'Just having a last look around. How's it going?'

The nurse shrugged.

'All quiet. The little dears are all asleep, even the ones who are little or dears.'

Constantin laughed quietly, thinking: for a change.

'Fine, my shift's over now. I'm off home. Bye.'

'Lucky old you,' commented the nurse, tartly. 'Mine's only just begun.'

To get from the West Wing to the staff car park meant going into the Admin block again, at ground level. Passing the main corridor to Reception he nearly tripped over a bucket and mop left lying around a corner. Cursing briefly, he pushed them aside and looked around for the absent owner, seeing no-one. Bloody careless, the lighting here isn't too good and a person could have an accident on those things. He carried on down the corridor. Then he caught sight of a door left ajar. Odd, he thought. Then: hang on, that door - is the Director's. He never stays after five and is damn certain never to let anyone not a doctor or director get in there. Who's in there at this time?

Retracing his steps he returned to the open door. Dim light, open doors, nobody in sight; pretty creepy, in fact. Nor could he hear anything from within the room. Not subscribing to the traditional method of asking "Who's there?", the Monitor threw the door open and slammed the light switch on.

Anticlimax. There were no intruders lurking in the Director's room. Nor were there many places to hide. Constantin checked behind the big mock-wood desk, beside the filing cabinets, even under the computer table, without result. There was another door in the Director's room leading into the next corridor, so Constantin tried it. Unlocked. He opened it and peered up and down the corridor but saw no-one.

Well, better not stay in the Director's precious room if there was no good reason to, he might get blamed for those opened doors. When he came back tot he corridor neither bucket nor mop remained.

I'll have words with the person responsible for that, thought the Monitor, an intent that had faded and been forgotten by the time he got home. When next he remembered, several days later, he considered that it was probably coincidence that the door stood open. After all, it was MagIC locked and only Director Iliescu had a key, so nobody else could have broken in. Constantin's decision not to follow up the incident was to have important repercussions, not least for him.

The Monitor returned to his fourteen hour shift on Thursday, later that week. Doctor Bussel wanted him to help in another assessment, one that both knew would be difficult. To pacify his stomach he consumed a sandwich before the appointment whilst going on a tour of the North Wing. This area housed the children on the "Risk" register, frequently in need of medication or restraint due to their various mental illnesses; normally, in accord with FedCon guidelines, children were integrated with their peers instead of being walled off. Constantin often felt mingled anger and pity for them: pity for their condition, anger that society so ostracised and rejected them that only the despised FedCon would take them on. These children didn't start the Last War, did they? So why treat them like the villains not the victims?

The MagIC keys on his loop were needed to get past every door in the North Wing since they were secure doors. Not just to prevent kids getting out but to prevent others getting in. So, following the insert-press-extract-open-shut routine, Constantin went around the North Wing, getting into a mannered acceptance of the security delays.

Suddenly, turning a corner, he came face to face with a man pushing a mop. The surprise made him jump.

'Sign of a guilty conscience,' said the cleaner, deadpan.

'Eh? Hang on, I recognise you. You get around, don't you.'

The cleaner tipped his hat insolently.

'I'm a general relief. I do what the others aren't around to do. Today Ion is on leave so I do his job instead. Here to straitjacket a kiddie, are you?'

Constantin flushed with anger. This man had a way of being insulting just in the way he stood.

'I don't like your attitude, friend. I don't certify the children in here - if they get jacketed it's to protect themselves and others.'

To this the cleaner responded with a shrug. "Bored already" said his posture and expression. Constantin ploughed on, goaded by the man's insulting ignorance.

'I've got two little ones of my own, so I know what I'm talking about. Our children here are treated in the best way, the best, and if you want to keep your job-' this point being emphasised with a prodding finger '-you can stop being sly with me. Now, get out of my way!'

Off strode the Monitor, fuming with righteous indignation. Guilty conscience indeed! Ha!

Jarmila got a slightly coloured version of this exchange when her husband came home from the Institute to their flat in the small hours of the morning. She could tell her husband was cross because he wouldn't sit still and instead chose to stand and pace about. Eventually he calmed down and went to bed with her. Why so upset? She wondered. He did a hard and thankless job, did it well and never allowed the ill-informed to trouble him about his occupation or how he did it. Perhaps the shift work was running him down. Yes, that must be it, he'd gotten over-tired and this temper was the result.

Having taken a fortnight's leave at his wife's urgent pleading, on his return Constantin walked back into the Institute's doors to be greeted by the mixed smells of the place: disinfectant, food (especially cabbage), vomit, lino and air freshener all blended together into Institute-smell.

Signing-in extended beyond a formally whilst Irina quizzed him about the holiday.

'Nothing much. We went to Kiev with the kids, though, stayed over a couple of nights. Nice place, but I wouldn't -'

'You wouldn't want to live there,' interrupted Irina. 'Yes, I know, one of my boyfriends lived in Kiev and I went to stay there with him. The traffic is awful and they're all really rude. The best thing about Kiev - what's that?'

A low black GEV had parked, badly, on the staff car park. It's gull-wing doors swung upwards and people climbed out, then paced over determinedly to the glass doors of Reception. One person remained outside, the others entered.

'Hi! Recognise me?' asked their leader.

'You're the cleaner - Vaclav, isn't it?' responded Irina. Constantin recognised the accusatory cleaner, too.

'Wrong.' The cleaner's voice lost all of it's bonhomie and he reached down to his boot, coming up with a long, thin metal object that both Constantin and Irina recognised as a Zap Gun.

'Recognise this? Yes, rather more accurate guess this time. Miss Eremenko, keep away from the switchboard and phones. Stasha, the wires, please.'

One of the others produced a small, mono-bladed knife and carefully cut the phone line in two places.

'What are you bloody fools doing?' exclaimed Constantin in astonishment and worry, believing that these were thieves out to rob the Insititute of - and to his astonishment Vaclav produced a Red Card and smiled broadly. The cleaner belonged to UNION?

Vaclav laughed.

'Constantin, your face. Don't worry, all will be revealed. We are working for Internal Audit, investigating the Institute and staff. Do as we ask and you may get promoted.'

They took the Monitor into an empty dayroom, leaving Irina under the watchful eye of their woman at the doorway. Vaclav produced a sealed plastic bag and tipped the contents onto a table in front of Constantin.

Skin? thought the Romanian. No, naked bodies. Porno books. So what - he looked closer and realised how young some of the featured actors were.

'Those are children!' he said, sharply. Vaclav nodded.

'Illegal and immoral. You haven't seen their last pages, though, friend, because that's where the children get murdered. Their title in English - well, no, _American_ , the English wouldn't like it described as their title - is "Sex 'n' Snuff".'

Constantin turned to one of the rear pages and felt his stomach flip, anger welling up. He closed the book quickly, feeling tainted from merely touching it.

'Why do you show me this - this rubbish?' he asked, coldly. Vaclav replied equally coldly.

'Because those children came from this Institute, Mister Romanescu.'

Constantin looked up in astonishment.

'Yes, you heard me correctly. From this Institute. We found out when the American Catholic Underground smuggled a teenaged drug-addict out from a Californian porn-parlour. Lucky for him; not many survive this process. Name of Simon. He told us where he came from.'

'From here? He came from here?' The Monitor couldn't believe what he heard.

'Yes. Your Director, his Deputy, the Matron and a Monitor are able to sell off children. The Monitor selects them, Matron examines them, the Deputy carries out the paperwork and the Director calls in an American to take them away.'

Constantin slapped his head. Of course! Those Canadians - always present at night when there were few witnesses, with an explanation for their accents.

'Which Monitor?' he asked, wondering if he could get to the man and beat him senseless before these people arrested him.

Vaclav shook his head. He didn't want any complications, including dead suspects. The set-up here had been very compact, partly explaining it's success; only four people involved. He wanted all four to go unimpeded to trial, which might not happen -

_Bang!_ went the table as the Monitor smashed it with a clenched fist. He had spotted a face on one of the magazine's back pages, where the thing fell open, a face he recognised amid a welter of gore: Lila Angelicu, a ten year old nicknamed "Hedgehog" because of her preferred hairstyle, a short spiky crop.

'Who is it! I'll gut the bastard with a chisel! Just tell me who -'

'Calm down, Romanescu. We want them to go to trial with all their arms and legs attached. More than that, we want their American contacts, who are due to attend a meeting with the Director this very afternoon, in this building. Must be important for them to break cover in daylight. Anything you do to the Americans, if we get them, will be pale and merciful compared to what their own people would do. Regardless, don't think of having a go yourself.'

Vaclav didn't enthuse very much because that would have given away the extent of his poking and prying, but this was the only occasion the Americans had ever done business in daylight and they were executing a major plan. The simple act of catching the Director together with American agents would doom him to at least five years ice-grinding in McMurdo Sound. Matron and Deputy Szilard were already in custody. Monitor Sabic still remained on duty within the Institute, unaware of the fate of his accomplices. Vaclav sent one of his minions off to detain the free Monitor.

'Will you be okay here?' asked the last remaining agent.

'Oh, I think so. Don't worry. Once you've taken him out to the car, bring the projector back.'

An hours-long wait ensued. Constantin fretted impatiently, mentally reviewing all the adoptions over the past years; he felt certain there had been signals he had missed and blamed himself for blind ignorance. Hindsight was a big stick and he beat himself with it, repeatedly.

Constantin had heard of American "Porn Parlours" before, a major industry in California, using non-Americans by preference because they had no legal existence and there would be no punishment if such people suffered or died. Constantin was unaware of the voracious appetite of this industry; it's victims were killed deliberately for the unbelievably vile sex and "snuff" industry grown from an underground legend into a nightmare reality, died from "client trauma application", contracted diseases, became drug addicts by policy to ensnare them further, ran away, got arrested, committed suicide. A lucky few, a fortunate, were smuggled out of America by one of the weedlike underground organisations that flourished there, such as the ACU or Democratic Labour.

The Director and two accompanying people left their very expensive car and walked across to Reception. Unseen to them, a low black GEV pulled up behind their car, blocking any movement. The sentry on watch at Reception hid carefully after giving a warning.

So the Director simply nodded to the girl on Reception's front desk and carried on. He ushered the two guests into his room and experienced a heart-stopping surprise.

'Hi there,' said Vaclav in American-accented English, very comfortably seated behind the Directors desk. The two guests, Americans, looked blankly at each other, then turned to go. Too late. Monitor Romanescu stood in the doorway, armed with a club and a stare that threatened more than his weapon. He slapped it into an open palm, making a nasty, hollow sound.

At first the Director shouted and blustered, until he caught sight of a pornographic magazine on the desk. Then he became very quiet, thinking up reasons and excuses.

Vaclav leaned back in the comfortable chair. He had to play things carefully now; a statement would be nice to tie up all the loose ends and the evidence to date, but a confession would be even better. If the Director tried to tough things out the end result would be a lengthy and embarrassing public trial, bringing all sorts of unwanted information to attention. The MJO preferred a nice low-profile prosecution of FedCon members. Captive American agents, on the other hand, were guaranteed a judicial spectacular. A detail of FAA provosts were en route from Kiev to collect the agents, so all Vaclav needed to do was baby-sit them for the immediate future. His aides dragged the Americans away, separately, to be locked up. Neither spoke (good practice for captured spies or agents) but they were pale and jittery.

That left Vaclav and the Director alone.

(First, soften your target up, like the Meatgrinder)

'You're a very unpleasant man,' said Vaclav in a neutral tone. 'One of the most unpleasant men I've met in my career.' (Technically true, even if it was a short career).

'I didn't know what they did! I didn't know - my God, do you think that I'd have done that deliberately - I didn't -'

'My opinion is that you didn't give a shit what happened to your charges once they left here, Director.'

(Second stage. Attack.)

Vaclav jumped out from behind the desk and put his victim in an armlock; he forcibly dragged the Director out of his room and down the corridor, encouraging the man with vicious, well-placed kicks.

'In there. Open it with your teeth, the lock's off.'

The Director complained. He got another kick for that, until finally he managed to open the door with his teeth, no mean feat for a terrified man held in an awkward, painful grip. Vaclav propelled him into the room with an ungentle shove.

'This is our interview room. We already have your accomplices in custody. More than that, we have all that coded information you carefully secreted on your computer. Also, we have videoed disk records from the bugs I planted in your office.'

Yes indeed. Alex - masquerading as Vaclav the cleaner - had puzzled about the information hidden within the computer. Being a night cleaner enabled him to get into the Director's office undetected but he couldn't possibly decrypt the codes in the time available. So he simply copied the hard card to another, portable one set up by a computer expert, then mailed the copy to Novi Bucuresti. He didn't have an inkling of what resided on either disk, though it must have been serious enough for the Director to turn visibly green.

Not that his complexion improved when he saw the body. That of a man, naked, lying in a pool of blood in a corner of the interview room, where blood pooled around his back. The man's face lay toward the wall yet from his bald spot the Director knew it was Sabic. His tongue stuck firmly to the roof of his mouth and his feet tingled coldly.

Alex looked over at the corner, too.

'Oh, him. You recognised him. Yes, I'm afraid we got a little carried away with him. He died.'

Alex dipped a hand in the blood and smeared it on the cringing Director's face, smiling a hateful smile of no humour but much malice.

'Imagine this is the blood of the children you sold into slavery and drug addiction and death, Director.' The voice was quiet and neutral but the eyes, the eyes were like little chips of diamond, Alex barely suppressing the disgust and anger accumulated throughout the weeks of working undercover. 'Now, suppose you start telling me the truth about your little escapades here before -' and he gestured towards the body in the corner, smiling that bleached smile again.

At this the Director's nerve broke. He started to babble in ho special order about his dealings with the Americans, arrangements for transfer, cheques, monies, vetting of children, approaching other contacts; he went on and on and it was all recorded. Finally, for verification purposes, Alex asked him to state positively that no duress had been exerted, to which the Director assented. By that time he would have cut his own throat, so desperate was he to escape from the cold, calculating hatred that shone out of the ex-cleaners eyes, a hatred only just under control.

Then Alex turned the projector off and the "body" disappeared. Making a hologrammatic representation had been relatively easy, but finding the blood to go with it had been much harder, necessitating a visit to a kosher slaughterhouse after hours (truly a quantum difference between this and shuffling paper at Benford). Of course, they could have got the same effect by turning Romanescu loose but dead suspects were hard to prosecute.

"Flexibility", it turned out, meant working undercover within the four walls of a FedCon orphans institution in Novi Bucuresti. Funny business going on there, it seemed. Alex would be a humble relief cleaner standing in for staff on holiday, working nights whenever possible, ferreting around, pushing an antique bucket with a tatty mop (local funds being low). Alex didn't mind, not at all, not after seeing where and how ex-inmates of the Brancusi Institute ended up.

The wildly-staring woman encamped behind her desk seemed extremely hostile towards Alex - or so he thought. When he reported in to the two jocular agents responsible for "Various Nefarious Activities", as they referred to themselves, they reassured him that Mad Alice always behaved like that, except when she was worse. They provided him with false ID and an accommodation address: a cheap hotel near the centre of Novi Bucuresti.

The "Elysium otel" was where Alex returned that night after the successful bagging of the Institute criminals. He bought a small bottle of Tsuica from the hotel bar where they had either that, or vodka, or imported Ukranian beer. The elevator smelt of urine and old cigarette smoke that the cloying disinfectant couldn't quite cover. When he walked down the corridor to his room a door opened and a thin, dark-haired woman clad only in underwear glared at him.

'Where the fuck have you been! - oh - shit - sorry, I thought you were somebody else. Sorry.' She slammed the door shut. Alex stared at it for a second, shook his head and moved on.

He didn't put the lights on in his room, which helped to camouflage it's seediness. Instead he opened the curtains wide, cracked the seal on his bottle and stared out into the hear of the night, taking sips of plum brandy. There weren't too many lights to brighten the nights in Novi Bucuresti but he watched them come and go; traffic on the roads, once or twice an aircraft overhead. Periodically his breath fogged the window and he had to rub it clear. From this vantage point an observer could see the Brancusi Institute if they knew where to look. Alex tried not to.

There's something sick in our world if people are capable of doing what they did to those children, he ruminated, breaking a self-made promise not to mentally go over events yet again.

Children, sold off like cattle, treated like cattle if it comes to that, he thought. People who claim it wasn't their fault, they didn't do anything terribly wrong, the children would have come to a bad end anyway. Sick bastards! I hope they get five years hard labour at McMurdo Sound. Apart from the American agents. I hope they get five-star hotel treatment, luxury accommodation, all charges dropped and free passage home to Washington. Then their own people will torture them to death.

He drank more tsuica.

I hope the next assignment is less of an encounter with low-life vermin than this one. Ugh. The things you find hiding under stones.

Collapsing backwards onto the bed, probably breaking the springs, he contemplated the ceiling whilst draining the bottle. Finally, thought processes rendered incoherent by alcohol, he fell asleep.

Next morning Alex awoke unaffected by his drinking binge of the night before. That made him feel good. What made him feel bad was that he'd neglected to make out a report on his mission. FedCon obviously wouldn't survive much longer if he didn't make out such a report so he started right away.

22) FGR KIA

ICE07

NORTHEN PACIFIC GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

OCTOBER 13

Weiss felt on edge, a feeling that had manifested itself for several hours. Although not an unduly possessive man, he felt that his civilian counterparts were almost committing an act of trespass, carrying out their inspection of the Iceberg.

They seemed impressed by how functional everything was aboard the orbital command post, also mildly surprised at how small it's internal dimensions were. Bibor acted as tour guide, with Rossi as an impeccably dressed escort.

Bibor ensured the representatives knew how old the vehicle they were travelling in was, calmly adding that since it had been built it had been overhauled fifteen times. But, an overhaul actually constituted a major operation since it meant a host of technicians and piles of equipment needed to be bussed up from Downside. What UNION needed, really, was another, bigger Iceberg.

McIlwain and Ben Jedid, representatives of the Extraordinary Caucus, didn't laugh or nod at that. They knew what kind of hint their host dropped. Every time civilians went on a tour of the Iceberg numerous subtle and not-so-subtle hints were dropped about how old it was and how much a new vehicle would serve better. However, UNION found itself in a dilemma: if they performed so well despite the antiquity of their hardware, why bother to upgrade or replace it at vast expense? And should they fail to do so then why should more money be wasted on them?

The visitors next venue was the observation deck, unofficial rest room and recreation facility of the Iceberg, in so far as it ever actually had recreation facilities.

Bibor hurriedly shooed away two off-duty crew who were playing an interactive video game in a carrel. They went with considerable bad grace and many backward glances, but once they had gone the Hungarian could demonstrate the relative lack of leisure amenities. Duty aboard the Iceberg was usually routine - occasionally panic-stricken and desperate, but usually routine - and off-duty time could be claustrophobic, boring and tedious; decent entertainment would alleviate any symptoms of such neglect. To McIlwain and Ben Jedid the observation deck seemed pokey and undersized but they did notice several sophisticated viewing screens and interactive software games arrayed in the cubicles. Expenditure going in one direction, they assumed; common sense, they were told. If you had the fixed and expensive hardware, the best you could do was to buy the best software since it came relatively cheaply.

'Just a minute,' said McIlwain. 'That wall chrono.'

All four looked at it, a metre wide analogue clock.

'Yes?' enquired Bibor.

'Why doesn't my watch agree with it?'

Because the Iceberg ran on its own internal time, was the answer. Crossing the IDL in both directions frequently, GMT or any other time became a nonsense for the command vehicle. A master register in the duty room kept track for official purposes or those curious enough to ask, or obsessive enough to worry about it.

'Bloody hell!' exclaimed Mclwain. 'You mean my watch is right - hell, we have to be somewhere else for that conference in short order, Jedid.'

Bibor carefully filed away for future reference the fact that these two seemed to be on good terms, just in case it was needed.

The Algerian looked worriedly at the wall chrono, then at his wristwatch, then at McIlwain, then at Bibor. The Downside shuttle that had delivered them still remained in Docking and, worse, causing even more delay, the legally-enforcible rest period for their shuttle pilot hadn't expired yet. The man wouldn't want to depart.

Informed of this, Weiss saw and seized an opportunity to impress his guests, with a quick call to Rossi via an earlink. The Italian would pilot one of the FedCon SkyClippers Downside whilst the civilian pilot waited out his rest period.

'Wimp. Should have stayed in bed this morning,' was Rossi's whispered aside to Bibor.

Happily able to disregard the interlopers due to his diverting offer, Weiss returned to his own room to deal with a spectacular backlog of work. The incoming dump-disk bore a stack of calls from Downside, including one that came flagged as "Red Rover" (currently the code for "Vital, call me wherever I may be").

Weiss left that one for a few seconds until he checked the headings on the rest of his workload. They all seemed routine and boring so he tackled the Red Rover.

'Hello sir. Bad news about the RSFG murder; we have had word from the Bundespolizei about the murder weapon and the murderer. Ave Mobile.' Which meant that the Nigerian was in transit and needed to be reached via TACT. Weiss wondered what would drive the man to go mobile like that, a practice used to divert trails or watchers.

After taking thirty seconds to get a connection, Weiss got a grainy colour image of Olukaside, enlarged beyond comfortable resolution, shown on the wall screen. From what Weiss could see the Nigerian sat in a PTV with all windows polarised.

'Oh - sir. You got my Rover call.'

'Of course, you idiot, that's why I'm calling back. Carry on.'

'Right. The Bundespolizei got back in touch with us, about their forensic results. They insisted on going through their pyramid procedure, despite the lead we gave them. They eventually came round to asking us for FedCon fingerprint files of staff and suspects and they got a tally, a one hundred per cent match.'

There came a pause, seemingly for dramatic effect. Weiss's peppery temper got the better of him.

'Don't keep me in suspense, Olukaside!'

'It was Rossi, sir. The fingerprints on the ammunition clip, the bullets fired, time and date - all correspond, sir.'

The normally unflappable Weiss felt stunned, hit from behind by the sledgehammer of incredulity. A member of UNION being the murderer, and that person being Fidelio Rossi.

'Is this reliable? Are you - good God, are you sure?'

Olukaside nodded. Once the Bundespolizei informed him of their print match he retraced all of the Italian's movements on that day. Those movements included flying a Sky Clipper to RSFG Munich; the approach run it made could very possibly have been over the murder site. That had been all he felt comfortable doing; he had no idea about "why".

Colonel Weiss sat back. He had no idea about "why" either. After a brief bout of internal cursing he mentally reviewed Rossi's recent conduct, all that he could remember of it, since there didn't seem to be anything remarkable to stand out.

'Right, Olukaside. Stay mobile, please. I'm going to co-ordinate action from here. Ave fenestre. Duty officer, re-route my calls through to Bibor, then get me a line to Frankfurt, our office there.'

A hissing pause while the call went out.

'Hello, Frankfurt? Go to Line Protocol One. A FedCon agent, Guido Rossi, is due to land a Sky Clipper at Frankfurt airport. Probably within an hour, but it depends on how the aircraft gets stacked by traffic control. Your mission is to arrest and detain Rossi once he lands the aircraft and leaves it. The charges against him are likely to be capital ones, so exercise caution; he's armed and dangerous and there are two Extraordinary Caucus members aboard the aircraft. Whatever you do, please don't shoot holes in them! Amen'

The Frankfurt Crash Crew were three women and one man who sat, bored, in the aged, seedy lounge of UNION's Frankfurt office.

'Action at last,' said one, gloomily, as unhappy at the prospect of action as they were at enduring boredom.

They all knew Rossi by reputation and one of them had actually worked with him; the Italian was not known for his kind, forgiving nature or his gentle, forbearing temper and was a military transferee to UNION to boot, decorated several times and rumoured killer of fourteen people, six of those being dangerous American agents. None of the four were overly eager to cross swords with him.

'Ho. Right, you - yes, you - get a Strobe Stunner for each of us, with two Twitch grenades. And, also, I'd like a body shield.'

'Polyplastic?'

'If they have any, if we merit that. And a couple of Spiders. Quick now!'

Off scuttled one member.

'Next, you contact Motor Pool for clandestine transport. A transit vehicle of some description that's big enough to carry all of us and an unwilling passenger also.'

Another team member left. Before any more instructions could be given the remaining person punched out a number on her TACT.

'Line Protocol Two, URDU connect. Direct to this terminal details of Downside-bound flight from ICE07, departure time approximately of this check.'

Electronic data buzzed backwards and forwards via Polsat, which then intoned the required information._'Incoming flight ICE07-06, given reference VL-331, due to land runway Tango Frankfurt Airport at 14:50 plus or minus ten minutes.'_

'We know that much already.'

'Ah, yes, but if we monitor this line we can find out exactly, precisely, when the Sky Clipper lands. The controllers will have it in a descent pipe and spiral for at least thirty minutes.'

Thoughtful pause.

'If we really need to we can request a hold on VL-331 for about twenty minutes.'

They decided not to do that unless drastic measures were needed, since anything untoward might alert Rossi. "Capital Offence" meant that he wouldn't be inclined to debate matters calmly with the Crash Crew.

McIlwain and Ben Jedid peered out of their respective windows while their aircraft taxied slowly along the tarmac apron, neither really paying attention to a blue-and-white Luft Flug courtesy coach at the terminal. Had they done so, they might have noticed that the airline logo was actually an acetate appliqué and the blue paint bore every appearance of being sprayed on within mere minutes of the coach's arrival at Frankfurt.

The Sky Clipper halted jerkily, brake servos whining as Rossi sought to bring it to a gentle halt, since he was under orders to treat the Caucus members with every consideration. That was why he left the cockpit to open and secure the passenger steps.

The rear door of the Luft Flug coach dropped to the tarmac, making a ramp that four armed and armoured figures raced down at a frantic pace.

'GUIDO ROSSI YOU ARE UNDER CUSTODIAL DETENTION DO NOT MOVE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RESIST WE WILL TAKE RESTRAINING ACTION IF NEEDED.' (Helmet loudspeaker).

Rossi ignored the warning and drew his pistol, but he faced four people with their weapons already pointed; a well-aimed Spider hit him squarely on the chest. The adhesive tendrils, developed from a party novelty known as "String-in-a-tin", sprayed out all over his upper body, hardening upon contact with the air. For good measure he was shot twice with a strobe stunner, big bright blue flashes reflecting up off the ground.

The Italian staggered backwards. He should have fallen to the ground convulsing, but instead remained upright, off-balance, straining at his bonds, glaring ferociously at the four assailants.

'SHIT LET GO WITH THE TWITCH.'

Two of the non-lethal nerve-agent grenades burst at Rossi's feet, sending up a rush of gas, yet he still didn't fall. Still staggering and jerking spasmodically as the gas took effect, he lurched toward the tail of the Sky Clipper. And still he hadn't dropped his pistol; in fact he even managed to fire twice, only to hit his foot.

He shouldn't still be conscious, let alone upright! shuddered the Crash Crew leader.

'STAND STILL.'

By now, accidentally or intentionally, Rossi reached the exhaust flanges of the underwing engine and he carefully leant backwards against the hot metal. At well over a hundred degrees from it's recent usage, the exhausts' metal melted the Spider-webbings immediately, also searing Rossi's skin and uniform in a tarry ellipse across his back. Smoke tendrils curled up and the Italian was free.

'OH NO OPEN FIRE.'

Too late, and Rossi too fast; he threw himself underneath the aircraft fuselage as shots whistled around him, then leapt up on the opposite side. A bullet hit his shin without toppling him, letting blood run down his leg in a large, dark stream.

The Crash Crew chased Rossi but he was once again too fast for them, for all that he had been shot and gassed. Using the port passenger door he entered the port passenger section and locked the door from the inside. Once inside the aircraft he rapidly conveyed via the intercom the fact that he had two ExtraOrdinary Causus hostages at his mercy and that both would die if anyone tried to enter the aircraft.

As a measure of last resort, one of the UNION team shot out the Sky Clipper's tyres. The Crash Crew leader admitted defeat and called the airport police.

'We were monitoring your channel,' replied one of the police. 'A Crisis Response Unit is on it's way to the terminal. Do not take any further action.'

The airport's specialist unit was unhappy with both the performance and account of the UNION Crash Crew. Not actually spoken, the words "bungling" and "amateur" hung in the air, along with an air of arrogance that boded ill. The police, with dog teams, snipers, close-quarter marksmen, lights, cameras, nightscopes and radios carried in at least five trucks, were believers in the theory that numbers could do the job.

'What other demands has he made?' asked the senior detective in charge of the operation.

'Only the one we all heard. Live press and television coverage with media reps in attendance.'

'We can get him outside the aircraft for that,' interrupted a police sniper, 'and have people on the tarmac ready to deal with him.'

His chief nodded and gave orders to that effect.

Two marksmen clad in matt black clothing began crawling across the tarmac to the aircraft's rear, where those within the passenger section would be unable to see them. At the same time Rossi's attention was diverted by a short discussion conducted by loudspeaker, stating that press members were on their way, would he consider leaving the aircraft to meet them? In addition to this, powerful Kleig lights were played over the portholes to dazzle anyone looking outside.

By the time Rossi lowered the passenger door, both police marksmen were in position, crouching unseen beneath the aircraft fuselage.

'What are they using?' asked the worried UNION Crash Crew head.

'Sturmgeschutz MGW55, machine pistols loaded with Squash Head, and they won't miss, either.' Unlike you, went the unspoken part of the sentence.

The Crash Crew leader kept her own counsel. She hoped the police would prevail, yet she knew that they hadn't missed Rossi, who had ignored his wounds and gone racing off like a greyhound.

Rossi came down the passenger ramp with the unwavering muzzle of his gun pressed firmly into his hostage's back, then dragged the other man with him and down the steps. He looked around, suspiciously, before a police spokesman hailed him and diverted his attention.

Out jumped the two police marksmen, assuming recommended firing positions (arms extended, elbows locked, feet wide apart) and began firing; one at the target's head, the other at his heart. The kinetic energy of their shots threw Rossi around, but he kept his balance, retaining an armlock on Ben Jedid, raised his pistol and shot one policeman down. The other marksman stopped shooting as Ben Jedid got into his line of fire. Given an opening, Rossi gunned down the second policeman and then retreated inside with his hostage as a shield, leaving blood from his wounds sprayed on the tarmac. McIlwain, left outside, kept his senses, ran to one side and then headlong for the police perimeter.

The police chief looked aghast at his two officers lying in the open next to the aircraft. One still moved. Confusion reigned while the police attempted to retrieve their two wounded officers, successfully. One actually died but was revived whilst the other suffered serious chest injuries.

The police were temporarily non-plussed at their totally unsuccessful manoeuvre, a failure inexplicable to them because they carried out every action in textbook fashion, right up to the point where Rossi refused to drop down dead. Seeing an opportunity and a chance to exploit it, the UNION leader spoke up with an extreme suggestion, since it seemed obvious that only a drastic solution to the problem would work.

Less than thirty minutes later Rossi emerged from the aircraft again, this time with his pistol firmly stuck in Ben Jedid's left ear, secured by a length of tape. The only area that the police negotiators would allow any press to congregate was in the concourse and Rossi knew that, aware that it would be the only place large enough to accommodate many people but also able to be sealed off easily and securely. Rossi thus needed to leave the aircraft, cross the apron, enter the terminal stairwell, go up three floors and then gain access to the concourse.

For Ben Jedid the journey had all the elements of a slow-motion nightmare, shuffling spasmodically across the tarmac, followed by the stares, muzzles and gunsights of the police cordon, now increased by a regular police presence and airport security guards, too. The duo crossed the apron to a terminal stairwell, stumbled inside and found - nothing. No ambush. Up they went, six flights of stairs, Rossi not trusting the lifts - too vulnerable. From the third floor of the terminal there was a covered concrete walkway, with alternating wall-sized glass panels between the concrete panelling, each blank panel thus facing a window opposite. At the far end of this concourse a pair of swing doors led to the concourse.

The windows were Rossi's undoing. He considered them a possible source of danger, so he turned to face them when he passed, in case the police were out there spying, or trying another rescue. Halfway down the corridor, according to his routine, Rossi turned to face a window. Concrete panelling behind him shattered explosively. A twenty-five millimetre cannon dismounted from the UNION camouflaged escort vehicle had been hastily mounted on a lazy-tong flat bed, hidden by luggage as Rossi crossed the apron, then elevated and jacked into position level with the walkway. Two UNION members with mono-bladed knives quickly scraped and chipped away cement in front of the cannon muzzle, then drilled a (very small) hole to allow them to sight the gun. They were only able to fire twice because of the recoil, which threatened to tear the weapon loose and off the platform.

Cannon shell number one tore into Rossi's back, carried on through him, smashed the opposite window and sailed off into the middle distance, the imparted energy wrenching Rossi away from Ben Jedid. Cannon shell number two hit the Italian in the shoulder at an angle, throwing him out of the broken window, from which he fell ten metres, head first.

It worked! Enthused the UNION leader. The golem is dead!


	8. Chapter 8

Red Alert

RED ROCK/KRASNY KAMENIEV

STATION ADMINISTRATORS OFFICE SUITE

POST-CRISIS CONFERENCE

E-DATE EQUIVALENT JUNE 5/6

Each of the heads of division had arrived and settled down; an initial murmur towards the rear faded out as Station Administrator Bhatacharjee stood to gain attention. People shuffled, pulling their chairs around to face forward, towards the podium and its three speakers - Bhatacharjee, Prue and Griskiewicz. The first of these three stood to speak after a nudge from Prue. As Administrator the traumata of Red Rock fell upon his trimly tailored shoulders, which he expected - he didn't like, but he expected. After all, he was a scientist, an astrophysicist by profession and had been promoted to the rank of Station Administrator almost by default as one of the few people acceptable to all the factions within the establishment. Today was a day to worry about: it transcended the normal bounds of duty. Suicide, murder, sabotage and more and worse. He took a deep breath, focussing his attention upon jitters suddenly come to life in the region of his stomach, then began, by banging the less-than-impressive gavel (also known as the "gravel-gavel", it was actually only a humble geologists hammer, Mars being the distance from Earth it was and transport costs being what they were).

'This extraordinary session is now convened. For the record, we are now in the first quarter of June six, and it is eighteen-eighteen. The panel here represented consists of myself, Administrator Bhatacharjee, Deputy Administrator Prue and Comptroller Griskiewicz.'

Flat silence prevailed for several seconds. Bhatacharjee continued.

'I don't know quite what rumours have been circulating about the accidents that took place on the fourth, but we're here to inform you about them.'

Beginning when the word "accidents" was spoken, a low murmur ran round the room.

'Alright. Thirty-five people were killed in the explosions. Not three, not eight, not one hundred and fifty. Thirty five. Of those, thirty two were killed in Chamber Six, three in the plant room ante-chamber. Needless to say, those responsible for these attacks were killed by their own bombs. One of the reactors was slightly damaged and currently is operating on half-power, which is the minimum safe output. Until it gets repaired we will be running on five-sixths normal power rating. Make sure your staff note that. Five-sixths. Chamber Six, I'm afraid, is quite beyond repair. It has been permanently sealed from inside, also externally, so there is no way to get in or out that way. Again, make sure your staff are well aware of that. Now, those are the basic facts. Does anyone have a question? I'm sure at least some of you do.'

He scanned those assembled, carefully. Eventually one person stood to make a query. Emmenthal.

'Yes?' It had been a vain gamble, hoping that not mentioning details of the bombing would discourage enquiries.

'Why did they do it and who were they?'

The simplest query. Also the worst one.

'Why, I have no idea. Those responsible were Ranger Calvino and Technical Officer Price. As I said, neither survived. They left no notes or letters or ultimata.'

Left unsaid was the fact that there weren't any pieces left of the two guilty men, to determine anything about their state of mind.

'Suicide, maybe?'

'Not according to their last Taunas test results. With no note or reason apparent and knowing them as we do - er, that is, did know them - it isn't very likely.'

As Emmenthal sat down another person stood up. Bhatacharjee recognised him; Fujitake, the Japanese exo-physicist, polite but very insistent and unofficial head of the Asian faction within Red Rock.

'May I ask where these two men acquired material for their bombs?'

There was no answer yet to that question. The Administrator revealed that, as far as anyone was aware, neither man could have gained access to explosives. After all, Red Rock was a civilian complex, not a military one, and the only weapons allowed there were five handguns for the security guards.

'Could they have perhaps been seismic charges?'

'No. All audited correctly and accounted for.'

'What about a home-made weapon?'

'Not possible. Neither had access to the requisite materials, nor is there any forensic evidence of any such construction.'

Fujitake have a slight bow and sat down again, taking Bhatacharjee by surprise since he'd expected a much more persistent line of questioning.

A confused babble broke out amongst the division heads.

'Will we have to inform FedCon and the System Command?' asked an anonymous voice from the rear of the audience.

That was the question Bhatacharjee and his compatriots liked least of all, because of the answer, which was "yes". FedCon would of course press for an investigation; System Command would send out an unwanted and unliked investigator, to poke around. There would be a review of politics, policies and finances - and personnel. Every time a major, or just a moderate sized mishap occurred, there was always an investigation. One thing Bhatacharjee kept to himself; UNION would be poking it's ubiquitous tentacles into the mess, though they would have had an interest anyway; what would make them even more curious than usual was a fact known only to three people on Mars (those being Bhatacharjee, Prue and Griskiewicz) - that Price and Calvino had been seconded to the intelligence organisation's "Mars section" during their tour of duty here.

The whole dreadful, messy affair meant there would be hell to pay. The usual factors of politics, policies, personnel and purse-strings. He might possibly have to resign. That certainly wouldn't look good on a curriculum vitae, would it? although the removal of executive responsibility would be actually welcome. Still, this business seemed set to finish a promising career abruptly - and by what? More aptly, why?

As gloomy scenarios spun through his mind, the assembled division heads dispersed, mumbling and scraping chairs.

'Come on, Babu. Time for a cup of something hot and sweet,' said Prue. Griskiewicz sat glumly in his seat, arms folded forehead creased, legs stuck out straight in front of him, an archetypal picture of Slavic melancholia.

'Come on,' huffed Prue. 'I can't cheer you both up at once. I'll see you in Canteen One.'

3) The Busman

GREECE

THRACE

EKOPIAN ORACLE OF ZEUS

JULY 7

Alex flicked another apricot stone at the hollowed rock ten metres from his vantage point, hitting it squarely. The apricot stone bounced back and lay just in front of the rock, baking slowly under a fierce Hellenic sun. If he stayed still and was quiet enough for long enough then that little lizard would again emerge from its lair within the rock to collect the pit - just as it had previously all that day and yesterday and the day before. That lizard must be fond of apricots and their stones. Alex ate another apricot and waited.

Aha! There was the lizard - and also an airborne seagull, a rare sight here. Hovering carefully, beady eyes threaded tight upon the unsuspecting reptile, the gull began slowly sinking groundward without any noise.

Alex looked slyly from side to side. Gulls, any kind of gull, were protected under law; abusing them was a criminal offence and he didn't want any witnesses.

No-one near. The gull was closer, about to stoop.

With a deft overhand flick, Alex bounced his latest fruit core off the intent bird's head. It screeched balefully before winging hastily away, leaving its incipient lunch to scurry meekly beneath the overhead cover of home. The tourist remained where he was, sitting with his back against a boulder, rucksack on his knees, paper bag half-full of apricots by his right thigh. This was "his" spot and had been so for a week; conveniently located (his inn being near the oracle), it was a convenient place, picturesque, shaded and tourist-free (although there weren't many of that species to be found in Greece nowadays). A sound spot, therefore, for a mid-day rest for the tired traveller. Tired, because in the interests of posterity, Alex had walked up and down rocky hills and valleys, smelling pine and olive, feeling hot, nodding amicably to friendly locals, taking dozens and dozens of pictures. He had also illegally picked up pebbles from each site and secreted them in his rucksack; once home he would carefully label them, treat them with a surface preservative and put them on display - or give them away as souvenir presents. They had a considerable cachet, since Greece was so rarely visited by British tourists.

Home. Odd, really, thinking of Britain as home. Home, real home, where he had been born and raised, lay to the north-west of this country, near Beogradska, Belgrade to the British. Of course he would be thinking of Serbia, having just visited for several days. He probably still had a kilo of Mama's cooking deposited around his waist. She had bossed him cordially, matriarchal head of the clan - of whom several brothers and sisters were assembled - scolding his funny, foreign-accented talk, proudly telling visitors of her son "the important man", cooking huge meals, taking them all to visit Papa's plaque in the cinerarium. Returning to Britain would be a partial dislocation.

It had taken him several years to adapt to the rather insular island folk (claimed to have a national psyche similar to that of those other post-imperial islanders, the Japanese - polite, diligent and convinced of an innate superiority), but the culture clash had been lessened by stints of duty in Holland and Mexico. Well, time enough to think of home when he reached it, there were days left before that became a necessity.

'Time. Time. Time,' shrilled his wrist chrono. Set to remind him after a rest of one hour and, really, the best thing about a call like that was being able to ignore it. Perhaps he would make a move in ten minutes or so. There was an interesting looking route to the north-east that remained unexplored as yet but which held promise; if he remembered properly then Herodotus had mentioned a similar area in The History, when the remnants of Xerxes army had suffered cruelly in their retreat. And throughout his explorations he kept remembering the thought of a dinner with Mister Kazaklis. He liked the Greek innkeeper; when one of the Government Revenue Inspectorate appeared for a routine inquisition Kazaklis served him ouzo from the red-labelled bottle; two assistants had afterwards to remove their superior in a taxi, since he was incapable of moving under his own power. Typically Kazaklis - hospitable to the extreme.

Now that the sun had passed its peak it was time to bestir himself and move. There were no more apricots left, either. He hurled the last stone upwards with all his force and left before the pit came to rest.

For the tail-end of that afternoon Alex contentedly strolled beneath a broiling sun, taking alternate pictures of scenery and greenery. He had hundreds of frames in the magazine already and would stop, he decided, when the stock ran out. Greek Customs would have a delightful time if they decided to vet their visitors stock: five hundred differing shots of antiquities to wade through.

By afternoon's end the sun's heat had faded a little, sufficient to act as a reminder to any wandering tourist that their touring activities ought to cease and gastronomic ones commence. Alex knew that he would also take long enough to work up an appetite. Not that he needed reasons or excuses.

The route back to the Kazaklis taverna took him past olive groves and pine trees, arborea typical of Greece, then past a stream that fed a large pond - where there were said to be fish but where Alex and local anglers failed to catch anything, ever. A flight of jets overhead momentarily distracted his attention as he went downhill to Kavos, three tiny black deltas arrowing towards the South. Not a common sight in Greece. Perhaps, even probably, they were American.

Two peasant women walked by as he entered the village; after he gave them a cheerful "kalinicta" they stopped to stare, muttering about the stranger with a foreign accent, maybe one of those Serbian spies the Americans warned everybody about. They continued to watch his back as he walked down the street of small white houses. Unusually he had to step aside in order to avoid being run over by a car: in fact "the car" because there existed only one in the whole village, that belonging to Panos the taxi-cum-general-light-haulage driver. When Alex returned to Xanthi it would be Panos and his elderly, creaking motor carriage who would carry him. Panos sounded his horn twice as he left the village and the two peasant women waved back at him.

Alex continued, turning left to go uphill; the taverna sat almost on the brow of the hill so he had a full minutes exertion to reach it. His bag of pebbles weighed heavy as he climbed and silently he wondered why the locals endured such … uneven thoroughfares. Actually it was because the construction of an easily-ascended road with hairpin bends, mooted already by the provincial government, would cause too much chaos and inconvenience to the local villagers of Kavos. When Alex eventually reached his destination the owner and two villagers greeted him from their table; Yianni Kazaklis invited him to sit down and drink a cup or two of coffee. An offer not to be refused - the real thing, real coffee ground from real coffee beans, cost almost ten pounds per cup back in Britain. Also sitting on the table were little green stringy things set upon a small plastic plate - which were to be avoided at all costs, they were chillies and ferociously hot ones, too. On his first visit Alex had tried one out of curiosity when he saw locals nibbling away while drinking. He had regretted such a rash action almost immediately, when his mouth lit up like a glowing coal, his eyes filled, his nose ran and a bright red flush suffused his face. Then he suffered hiccups for fifteen minutes.

Now, a polite hush settled as each person sipped their American-subsided coffee. One of Mister Kazaklis' friends offered a chilli but ate it himself when Alex refused.

The Serb turned on his seat to look back over the valley below, seeing small white-rendered houses falling away in jumbled rows to the olive grove and stream bordering Kavos. Turning round made him wince when a splinter from the bench worked its way through his trousers.

'You have been taking pictures, yes?' asked Yianni, puffing at a pipe. They got by in English, Yianni being old enough to recall it from the heady days of the tourist boom, last century.

'Oh yes, lots of them.'

'Good. Culture is good.'

Alex nodded, noticing the tips of Mister Kazaklis' moustache, damp with coffee, unlike his own. They must have been drinking for a long time.

'Will you be joining us for dinner?' asked the taverna owner.

'Certainly. Allow me to get changed, perhaps a quick shower.'

'Ah,' said Yianni, in an ambiguous tone. His brother, Aristotle, nodded and smiled knowingly; they appeared to share private knowledge, or an in-joke. Yianni Kazaklis shrugged and made an apologetic face.

'Ah, Mister Petrovic, I am sorry. Again the electricity has failed us and we have no hot water.' The old solar panels atop the Kazaklis taverna were ancient relics that no longer worked and thanks to the Hellenic isolation from the FedCon dominated world, no replacements were ever installed.

Alex smiled briefly. After his day-long exertions, perspiring under a hot sun, the prospect of a cold shower was quite exhilarating. To ensure he didn't miss the evening meal he left the drinkers and their coffee, with their conversation.

Once inside the taverna his eyes were slow adjusting to such comparative gloom; it was even darker and stuffier than usual due to a lack of lighting and ventilation. Mrs. Kazaklis had put out oil lamps from an emergency hoard and their warm, buttery light made the dining room seem smaller and more intimate. One table, reserved for his use, had a red tablecloth set: cutlery, candles and glasses set upon the cloth.

Alex ate everything the Kazaklis had made for him, including hummus, tsastiki, stuffed pitta, stuffed artichoke, dolmades, baklava and coffee. Then he went outside to sit on the veranda to watch night arrive whilst talking to his hosts. Whilst Eleni sat with them then all three would drink coffee but once she had gone inside Alex and Yianni would share retsina. The older man was intensely interested in everything to do with the world outside Greek borders; he knew about current affairs in America, Burma, Korea and Mongolia, of course, but what went on out there in the "Wide World" was a matter of wonder to him. As an example, the integration of Tibet within FedCon, an event six months old, was entirely new to the Greek. So was the short (four days) border war between Katanga and Zaire; nor had he heard of Fast FireTorch. Everything old or indeed forgotten to Alex was new and interesting to Yianni. Contrariwise, what the Greek saw as parochial or old-fashioned seemed unaffected and ingenuous to Alex. By the time they were able to upend their retsina bottle in order to extract a final drop, night was fully upon them and a new moon rose over the sea, though clouds had made an appearance.

Less than sober, Alex pointed crescentwards.

'Just imagine. With a good pair of binoculars you could see the bases from here. All those people, hundreds and hundreds of them.'

Yianni looked sideways at Alex. Not having a pair of binoculars, nor being a member of a FedCon state, he had very little experience of and had never seen the lunar bases, not even the American one (the Americans didn't publicise their base very often now, since it was older and smaller than all the new FedCon bases). Consequently, the Greek could not be entirely sure that Alex was telling the truth. Still, tomorrow he would go down to the Captain to ask for a loan of his impressive Chinese binoculars, just to have a check. To Kazaklis matters such as living on the Moon or Mars or at the bottom of the ocean were all equally remote and bizarre, since each was so far beyond his experience. Rather more reflectively than either intended, both men went to bed.

ICE07

WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

JULY 8

'Coffee? asked Nils.

The Duty Officer nodded absently, holding out an empty cup with cold ersatz dregs still swilling in the bottom. He had taken over from Bibor hours before. Now, at half-past three in the morning, his endurance and attention were beginning to wane. If he continued to wilt one of the communication assistants would - strictly against orders - have to deputise for a few minutes while he went for a quick shower. That wasn't the worst part, either; knowing his shift still had over half its length to run felt worse. Additionally, being in free-fall felt entirely too much like a dream-state for him to be comfortable about remaining awake.

Time to make a routine check. Keep the attention working. First, ICE07's internal status: all green for go so far, apart from one red light indicating a fault in a computer display on the observation deck - non-critical, that one, because it had been glowing red for days. Eventually a technician would see to it.

That was the easy one. Now, External status. Downside first. As it had been for months, September Station was coping with a rash of incidents; the DMZ along the Marmara zone was quiet; a cargo ship in severe difficulties west of Ireland was being attended to by rescue vessels; McMurdo reported a successful FFT run; a minor earthquake in Japan had caused several thousand casualties, fatalities in the dozens, DRA was currently in attendance. There was a low-level pollution alert in the Brazilian rain forest around Degasvilla; two small synthetic spillages in the Red Sea, another in the making near the Andaman SMEX site; there were problems with shoal dispersal in the Bay of Biscay - no-one seemed to know why they were losing so much of the harvest; Upside, then …

Oh, God, he was falling asleep again. For a bitter second the counter-posed images of popular impressions about his job - romance, glamour, excitement, machismo - jostled with how he felt at that precise moment, tired, grimy, sweaty and becoming bored to distraction with a panorama of displays and three technicians who seemed to be annoyingly fresh and chirpy. Work for UNION and see the world, eh. UNION was the only remnant of the old United Nations, being the acronym United Nations Intelligence OrganisatioN, the joke amongst its members being that it had no unity, no intelligence and no organisation so what could you expect of it's nationals? and at this moment the Duty Officer agreed completely. He turned off the power, unclipping the helmet, and tapped Nils gently. Nils was the senior Comm technician and being wise in the ways of the world you could depend upon him not to mention when the rules became slightly deformed under stress.

'I am dead on my feet here, Nils. I've got to go and have a cold shower, try to wake up. Could you dep while I'm gone, for about ten minutes?'

Nils nodded silent assent, if not quite approval. Olukaside moved toward the exit, scratching his scalp where the helmet had been digging in.

'Perhaps that' not such a good idea, sir,' said one of the other technicians. 'I've got an action developing here.'

The Duty Officer stopped dead in his long, weightless footsteps, turned and returned, sighing. What now? What was it now?

One of the display lights had turned red and flickered: the light labelled "FIDO". FIDO, Federal Interdiction and Detection Organ, the combination filter/alarm interface that existed between Internal and External Net Monitoring. FIDO operated in every known language and most dialects of those languages, in order to detect any one from a list of proscribed words or phrases, determining their origin.

'Oh Hell. What do we have here?'

Ettienne tried to do two jobs simultaneously, dealing with Downside and trying to cope with FIDO. Olukaside leaned over to watch in silence.

'Here's the problem. Trigger words, coded ones.'

'From where? Can you get a location?'

'Not precisely, no. Could someone else take over my Downside function while I do …'

Nils silently slid over to comply. Olukaside remembered to plug in his helmet and turn it on. A sudden storm of white noise burst between his ears. Ettiene fiddled on, pressing buttons, twisting dials. Finally she got a result she felt happy with.

'Ha! There you are - Greece!'

The Duty Officer raised one eyebrow. Was that it?

'Is that it?'

'Patience, patience, just let me track this line. Aha. Right. Here, write this number down. Zero zero three one two zero one nine five by one three three three four one six five three.'

The Nigerian scribbled at top speed to take down the figures correctly. It was a map reference and needed to be processed through a locator. Right, he thought, let's see just what's going on down there in Greece.

As her superior typed the number sequence in, Ettienne realised the encrypted trigger words had been de-crypted and displayed on a screen. Oh dear, she said to herself: trouble.

1103DECRYPT TRANSCRIPTION DISPLAY

ITEMDECRYPT

PENGUINMILITARY POLICE COMPANY

FLASHLIGHTALERT STATUS

OSCARSTRAGEGIC SERVICES BATTALION

SHERMANSENIOR OFFICER IN CHARGE, MAC HELLENIC

REPUBLIC

SEARCHLIGHTEMERGENCY STATUS

When the Duty Officer saw the screen he agreed with Ettienne. Trouble of an as yet undetermined nature. Minutes meandered by.

'Do we yet have a point of origin yet?' asked Olukaside. 'Who's sending?'

There was still a problem, apparently.

'Blessed Jesus, we know who's _getting_ it - look at this -' called Nils

After ingesting the numbered co-ordinates, analysing and locating them, the electronic brain had printed out a location:

217 LATAKIA STREET; RHODOS DISTRICT; ATHENS; HELLENIC REPUBLIC: CURRENT LOCATION OF AMERICAN MILITARY MISSION H.R. HEADQUARTERS

Olukaside raised his eyebrows. Interesting news, indeed, and not a little worrying. So; they knew who had _received_ the message although the sender remained anonymous. But then, if there was an emergency Downside, why weren't the Americans being tighter with their transmission security? To overlook that they would need to be severely rattled, very severely rattled.

Another message had been intercepted, decrypted and displayed:

1104DECRYPT TRANSCRIPTION DISPLAY

ITEMDECRYPT

OSCARQV

SHERMANQV

SEARCHLIGHTQV

ARCLIGHTCRISIS STATUS

PENSACOLA NO DECRYPT AVAILABLE

HANDSOFFU.L.F.A.

WILSONRESIDENT AMERICAN AMBASSADOR

HARRISTOWN213 INFANTRY REGT

COLDHARBOR52 INFANTRY REGT

'How come we got this information?'

'Ah. Possibly, if there's a flap on Downside, then because of the hurry they may be using an unshielded screen until a shielded one is available. The link to the Mission is secure, I don't see how we can change that. Whoops, there we go! Lost it. They must have got a shielded unit on line.'

The Duty Officer nodded. Thank the Lord Ettienne was on duty, he felt confounded himself, only aware that a dimly-seen danger was percolating Downside. Better find out more facts, then, hadn't he? He studied both messages carefully until able to make sense, however partial, of them.

Putting things in order: an agency was calling the American Military Mission at half past four in the morning, moreover in such a hurry that they used an unshielded line; subject matter of this precipitate call involved a Strategic Services Battalion, whatever that might be; military police were involved in the emergency at crisis or emergency status. Hub of the matter: what was a "Strategic Services Battalion" and why all the fuss about it? Such a formation sounded like a ditch-digging or bridge-building outfit, nothing to worry about. Returning to duty matters: Olukaside went to check on Ettienne and her progress, but after a long delay they still had no luck in tracing the call's origin; not an easy task, certainly, taking several hours even if unsuccessful. Cloud cover over Greece prevented any pictures from coming through. Olukaside swam across the room to a shelf of directories and carefully selected one, labelled "American Military Codes Ver 7.21". After two minutes of flipping backwards and forwards he found the relevant entry:

**"Strategic Services (Batt., Regt.)**

**Special combat engineer unit; wartime mission is to destroy strategic targets utilising Atomic Demolition Munitions for which see cross reference entry heading ACORN also Mil. Ref. Dir; basic ordnance level currently 10 x 0.15 kt, 3 x 0.5 kt, 1 x 1.5 kt devices; personnel 950; equipment 45 x MGP Transports, 5 combat bulldozers, 5 AA carriers, HMV HQ section, 5 ARV."**

_Not_ good news. Not a simple ditch-digging, bridge-building unit _at all_.

Other screens were flashing news at him. Olukaside glanced from one to another, becoming more worried with each glance. Finally he reached a decision.

'Nils, see if you'll sanction this. As Dee Oh I want to raise our rating from Standby to Ready.' If they altered ICE07's rating upward to the new level, another assistant Duty Officer and two more technicians would come on duty to help support the workload. Nils nodded in agreement, imagining three unfortunates being roused out of their bunks by a squealing alarm at five a.m. with no forewarning; he gave a verbal assent to Olukaside, who reached up to the ceiling with one lanky arm and pressed one of the condition panels positioned there.

Within minutes three extra staff arrived, tousle-headed, red-eyed, yawning and grumpy; Streicher, fat, forty and much put out; Marvin, stubbly and scratchy and scratching his hair; Le Moignan, stubbly, scratching his chin and being snappy. All three stood around muttering until the Duty Officer rounded on them angrily and chased each off to a console telling them to move like the wind.

Ettienne piped through a fuzzy conversation being overheard by PolSat, the electronic eavesdropper, shown on an overhead display.

' … hello … hello … hello … foxhound two do you read do you read … foxhound two foxhound two … for the love of Christ respond … respond if you can …'

Not a hunt; down there a source was going frantic trying to raise "foxhound two", whoever or whatever that might be. Nils told Streicher to operate around a clutch of frequencies but the first to lock on, refine and resolve the scuttering airwaves was Ettienne. She stuck up a hand to show success.

'Ha! Got it. Triangulation, I've located the point of origin for the transmission on display. Putting in co-ords now.'

They were all working flat out now, trying to locate the units involved on the ground in addition to identifying them. Olukaside knew that if matters continued apace they would have Weiss breathing down their necks for ten times more information than they had amassed. Then he'd ask them what they intended to do with it and ("Good God!") they had better give the right answer. The Duty Officer started to write information down on his greenscreen, mistyped and began again, putting down times and events in chronological order. By this time his team of staff had been tracking the errant American unit through the circuitous method of eavesdropping on other units encountering it. The information derived from this was all very negative, consisting of fragmentary panic calls, coded passwords compromised by being broadcast _en claire_ , confused interjections from higher authority.

Despite their efforts, the Americans weren't stopping the renegades.

'They've crossed the Maritsa.'

'Given their current route, that will take them towards the Turkish border, to Enez. Possibly they intend to cross the border.'

Turkey! Olukaside's stomach did a back-flip in fright; an American (America, a nation state notable for its hostility towards the Federated Concordat and its constituent units) unit from Greece (the Hellenic Republic, stalwart client state of America since the Greek withdrawal from the FedCon and traditionally hostile to Turkey), running wild on Turkish (Turkey, member of the FedCon for many decades, traditionally hostile to Greece) soil - possibly carrying around fourteen nuclear warheads. Not for the first time, last time or any other time, Olukaside wished a Mighty Being had taken every nuclear weapon and thrown them into space. The direction of NGC11415 would do fine. Reflexively he reached overhead and pressed a third panel in a long-short-long pattern, sending red lights on all through ICE07, simultaneously sending out other signals to FedCon units across the world via satellite and almost incidentally rousing Weiss from his slumbers. To do this you had to be very, very certain. Having just managed to transcribe all the details so far onto his greenscreen, the Duty Officer passed it to Streicher with instructions to transmit the information Downside immediately. When this data had been received and re-routed through PolSat it would bring FedCon personnel up to date. Now, he ought to check progress; would the demented American engineers try to fight their way across the heavily defended and fortified Turkish frontier, or would they stop before then?

He had to inform the Turkish government that a regimental-sized firefight was rolling its way towards them at fifty kilometres an hour, with its core an apparently unstoppable rogue battalion mounting weapons that split atoms. He couldn't remember how to get in touch from memory alone so it was time to check the Main Index Headings; quickly, too.

A familiar voice whispered out of a speaker before he could get anywhere. Weiss.

'Duty Officer? Just what the hell is going on? Why are we on Emergency standing?'

Olukaside explained.

'I see. Do the Turks know about this?'

'You interrupted my call, sir.'

'You mean no, don't you. Well get on with it then you moron - and be fast about it too!'

Amid an escalating cacophony, the Duty team discerned a change in the American engineers movements, from south-east to south-west, taking them away from the Turkish border and towards the Greek coastline. Olukaside had a sudden, stomach-dropping, acidly unpleasant thought: were the Special Service Battalion's vehicles amphibious; that is, could they "swim" past the Turkish border on the coast and come ashore further inland, away from any interference?

'Streicher, find out if those engineer's transports can swim.'

'They can.' For once, Streicher sounded almost apologetic.

'They can? Excrement! How do you know?'

'I know. BMGP-25 twenty tonners. They can swim.'

'O Lord! They can come ashore anywhere once they reach the sea, in other words. Just fine. What next!' Olukaside thumped a fist into a palm.

There was slight consolation, added Streicher, as the engineers headed for shore: their vehicles would be much slower in water than they were on land, slower and clumsier, easy targets for an air strike. And providentially the Turks had woken up on receipt of the information from ICE07. They were readying their 127th Strike Wing, arming the aircraft that made up this formation, arming and fuelling them Frantic activity ensued on their airfield as technicians ran hither and yon with tubing and instruments, missile racks and coolant flasks.

But how long would it take them? Would the Turkish planes attack whilst their targets remained within Greek coastal waters? Olukaside thought this an absolute certainty (he was correct; it was later discovered that engagement instructions for the Turkish pilots had been altered, ordering them to stop the nuclear-armed engineers by any and all means possible - up to and including suicide attacks by diving aircraft).

Aboard ICE07 a sweating technician plotted the track of the intercepting aircraft and their targets; less than six minutes until they met. Greek military airfields near the Turkish border were beginning to stir, warming up aircraft, too. A flight of FAA jets had been alerted in the Marmara DMZ but they would take thirty minutes to reach the danger zone, when time was at a premium.

Suddenly, like an inverted thunderclap, there was silence in the Duty Room, startling in that claustrophobic den, a hush that seemed to leap from lip to lip as The Event occurred. Banks of red lights began flashing and for good measure a klaxon began hooting. By conditioned reflex adrenaline levels began to rocket. A babble of alarmed voices broke out simultaneously.

'Holy Jesus! Look at that!'

'Jesus Mary and Joseph! Oh My God!'

'Christ sir -' Olukaside in passing noticed that Nils always used the word "sir" when really there was no need for it at all ' - Red One! - we've got a bloody nuclear explosion here, sir, a Red One.'

'Help! There's a trace here …'

' … estimated five-hundred kay yield, ground zero at exact sea level …'

Olukaside picked - grabbed would be a better word - the Panic Phone from it's patented secure German cradle.

'Ave! Mayday! Colonel Weiss, we have a Red One here as of NOW!'

' … no trace or track of them, presumed destroyed …'

'Olukaside? What the hell, man, have - do you have the Tactical Control Officer in post?'

' … footprint analysis to follow. The one-two-seven Ess Wing report …'

'Yes, sir. We're moving to the Eastern Med plot. Uh, track those planes, Nils and get our own to patrol the border airspace. Yes, sir - will you convene a Tee Aye See immediately -'

'Can I have a timecheck?' asked a technie, avoiding thinking.

'Olukaside, forget the Committee, there isn't time. Carry on.'

' … Hello? Is that Marmara local? Yeah, so are we. Weiss is passing chocolate milkshake. Yes, we can definitely confirm a Red One …'

'Yes, sir, carrying on. Nils, will you track those godforsaken planes!'

As Concordat personnel everywhere knew by heart, by rote, by thorough training, "RedOne" denoted a nuclear warhead detonation, an event thankfully unknown to the world at large since the Last War. Aboard ICE07 the frantic duty team breathed a collective sigh of relief; to their profound gratitude the Turkish planes reversed course. Had they not, a Clamp might have been necessary. Presumably the detonation of a Red One had also removed the rogue engineers from the scene. Bulletproof or bullet-disregarding though they appeared to be they certainly couldn't resist the curdled crimson fireball that PolSat pictures showed rising from the sea. The second slice of luck dished out that day came when it was realised that the explosion took place outside the territorial waters of Turkey, depriving them of a potential _casus belli_.

Olukaside sat down, realising that it was half past eleven and his shift had officially ended three and a half hours ago. He felt drained, flushed-out, mentally and physically worn, sweaty and twitchy. His scalp itched, a sure sign that it needed washing. Remembering, he half-laughed, half-snorted: glamour, excitement, action, hey? Two out of three wasn't bad but glamour over the past six hours had been in short supply.

Tap tap, went a finger on his helmet. He looked up.

Colonel Weiss.

'Action's all over, I see. You did well, Olukaside. Sign off, have a shower and a quick nap.'

'I need it sir. A rest, I mean.'

'Sorry, you're not going to get much. The FedCon Extraordinary Caucus is convening. As Dee Oh you'll need to put in a full report, verbally and in writing, so you only get six hours off.'

The wrung-out Nigerian nodded sombrely, having realised already that he would inevitably have to report on the ramifications of what had happened during his watch.

The Extraordinary Caucus, all thirteen members, sat along a table thirty metres long and, depending on one's viewpoint from in front of the table, debriefed or interrogated people. Ben Jedid, of Algeria, held the chair. The Canadians insisted on looking at the Americans and their actions in a positive light. Opposing them were the Irish, who were as anti-pathetic as possible to be, detecting vile conspiracies in every perfidious Yankee step.

The Caucus sat in Luxembourg: while convened rapidly, the crisis was still over and hours gone by already; the media were carrying out inquests on Red One, not helping a fragile and glacial state now extant between Turkey and Greece. Weiss had browbeaten Jedid into agreeing that a much faster response would be needed in future: that a Threat Assessment Committee would be redundant under this resolution and that at least three extra permanent posts needed to be created aboard ICE07. Who would pay - that could be left to the money-jugglers and accountants.

Weiss, imperiously perched upon the interviewees chair, now recounted the train of events that led to Red One, the first use of a nuclear weapon in hostilities since the Last War. The Caucus relished the chance for a zealous debriefing: they rarely got the opportunity to treat the head of UNION in such a way.

'As we know, events unfolded thus: the Duty Team on ICE07 were alerted by FIDO when the American engineering battalion ran amok.'

'Ah - "amok"?' asked the Senegalese representative, unfamiliar with the idiom and Weiss's heavy accent.

'Berserk. Demented. Irrational. Yes? The engineers headed south from Metaxas barracks, eight truckloads of them. The engineers appear to have shot their way through at least three road-blocks, one a joint Greek-American inter-service blockade, downing a helicopter and causing over a hundred casualties en route. Their amphibious detour into the Aegean came to an abrupt halt when they realised Turkish interceptors were due to intercept them while they were still at sea.'

'Did we alert the Turks?' asked the Canadian. A changeable attitude! Weiss thought - "we" when it seemed creditable, "you" when it was not.

Weiss nodded. The Canadian wrote in her notepad. Clearly it seemed a Good Thing that FedCon alerted the Turkish Strike Wing.

'A question, Mister Weiss. Why? Why do this awful thing?' - the Irish representative.

Nor was it a rhetorical question. McIlwain expected an answer. The head of UNION sat nonplussed for a moment before answering - deciding eventually to tell the truth instead of lies or evasion.

'They were poisoned. That little we know already.' He left the sentence hanging.

'Poisoned. I see. By whom?' That McIlwain, fond of questions.

'We don't know. Yet.'

'Can you find out?' There. Another question.

'Not very easily. There is nothing left of the engineers. Their route is now sealed by both the Greek police and the Americans, the barracks are under a quarantine order, all surviving personnel are in a military hospital under heavy guard. We do have a sample of the water supply for Metaxas Barracks, obtained by one of our agents while things were still very confused, but the borders are sealed so collecting the sample is going to be very difficult. Our agent is local, so he can't get out, and therefore the water sample stays in Greece.'

Mutterings amongst the Caucus. Weiss felt a nasty, apprehensive tingle in his stomach. He knew what Ben Jedid would ask before the man spoke: could they get aforesaid sample from Greece to RSFG Munich as quickly as possible? If they could analyse then it ought to be possible to check for any poisons present, identify them if dissevered. Weiss (after consulting Rossi before leaving ICE07) concluded that the contaminant was probably a combination cocktail of a brainwashing agent and one of those aggression-inducing "combat pharmaceuticals" that the Americans were so fond of. Yes, indeed, Weiss would like to see the results of that sample himself, definitely.

In orbit above, Bibor, deputising for his superior, tapped his earlink monitor. Although he didn't need to, he listened earnestly to the Caucus proceedings. They were certainly quizzing Weiss, he decided, given that they seldom had the chance to debrief UNION personnel. Now, what was -

A Caucus rep Downside had asked if a sample could be taken from Greece to Munich. Weiss replied no; their man who had taken the sample was Greek and would never be let near a border; he had achieved a minor miracle to simply get hold of the water sample. As for trying to get an agent inside, forget it. No-one from FedCon would be allowed into Greece -

Ha! That was what he had tried to remember -

'Fenestre. Atria.' A scavenger microphone swivelled to pick up his keywords, putting him through to Weiss in seconds.

The Colonel savoured the unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling of futility. He had been forced to knock down all the Caucus' suggestions about retrieving "Sample A", incidentally pointing out that there was no certainty that the sample would actually prove to be contaminated if it ever got to RSFG Munich. Now the thirteen members were talking amongst themselves, deliberately ignoring Weiss while they discussed options. Simply judging from tone of voice, none of the representatives were happy with things. The probable subject of their discussion reclined in his seat and looked around the convention room in boredom. He counted the number of lights, the number of chairs, guessed which Caucus members composed which faction -

'COLONEL WEISS' boomed a voice. Weiss jumped upright in his chair, looked around and realised that the gain on his earlink had been set at maximum volume. A member of the Caucus looked at him enquiringly. Frantically, Weiss tapped at the monitor to reduce the volume.

' … have a man in Greece already, not too far from the incident zone. Sir, are you getting this?'

'Yes!' hissed Weiss. There were more glances directed at him now, some curious, some hostile.

'Ah - excuse me, gentlefolk … I'm getting an update from our Computer Command Facility … yes … yes … very well. Amen.' Weiss felt slightly smug about the phrase "Computer Command Facility" - it sounded impressive, better than an overworked, brevetted major from Szeged who (luckily!) was on the ball, telling that: a FedCon agent was inside the Greek borders even as they spoke.

Babble babble, went the Caucus. They were interested. All the situation needed was for McIlwain to -

'We want that sample at RSFG within twelve hours. Can you manage that Mister Weiss? Twelve hours.'

Feeling the need to finally say "yes" to a Caucus proposal, the head of UNION nodded. Rashly. After agreeing be belatedly thought again, in terms of timing; at least an hour to notify their Greek agent, then two for him to reach the man they had sight-seeing at Ekope, then five to six hours for their CI man to attain the border, leaving only three hours for travel from Greece to Munich. If there were any hitches en route then Sample A would be late and the Caucus would descend upon him, breathing both flammable and poisonous vapours. They relished any opportunity to demonstrate their charter-bound authority over UNION. Hell, that was what had driven his predecessor to a massive nervous breakdown.


	9. Chapter 9

EKOPE

THRACE

NORTHERN GREECE

Alex slept fitfully. Finally, he dozed off, at around half three in the morning, only to be woken hours later when an idiot elsewhere in the taverna thoughtlessly slammed a door, hard. After a little lethargic cursing the Serb rolled over, pulling a pillow over his head and sleeping again.

The alarm brought him back to life (reluctantly) at half past ten, squinting balefully across the room at it. Hot already, and he felt sweaty and sticky before even getting out of bed After a cold shower Alex felt more like a member of the genus Homo sapiens again. Now, first order of the day for recently revived human beings was breakfast. Food and drink. He went down the wooden stairs, three at a time, but avoided running his hand along the railing, since in several places the passage of many hands had worn away the varnish and left splinters. Nobody else seemed to be around at the moment, oddly enough, since Mister Kazaklis would by now be sipping on his _n_th cup of coffee, his wife would be cleaning and tidying. Alex scanned the darkened room with underway curtains, empty wooded tables partially open door. Where were they?

A bustling Yianni Kazaklis came in from the street outside, pale and mopping his brow. Seeing Alex, he stopped. The normally relaxed and affable taverna owner looked unusually tense.

'Oh, Mister Petrovic, such bad news.'

Alex stopped in his tracks. Fear, at least a kilo of it, fell internally from his heart to a location near his colon. Non-specific fear, the kind that generated a flicker of panicked images: bad news? like what - war in Greece? death in his family? his flat burned down? the money traced?

'Ah, such bad news. Have you heard?'

Hardly possible, given that the taverna didn't have television in its rooms and guests needed to travel into the village to get a newsfax. Alex asked the Greek to explain. Kazaklis sat down at a table. He looked unwell. Had some disaster befallen Mrs Kazaklis?

'The Americans, you know. They had a bomb, a nuclear bomb, that went off last night, near Turkey. Radio Elados says it was an accident, but what do we know? There may be war. The Americans and Turkey and Greece -'

His coffee cup rattled as he shakily placed it back onto its saucer. Alex went cold and his feet tingled. Gooseflesh crept up the back of his neck. To a Yugoslav the thought of a nuclear explosion that may have been hostile brought back a host of evil memories - the Last War, when Hungary and Romania's tiny nuclear arsenals had killed millions in each country and -

Holy Mother of God. Fallout. The stuff that had killed his father.

'Mister Kazaklis, did the radio say anything about fallout - radioactivity, plutonium, anything like that. Please; it's important.'

How commensurate Mister Kazaklis felt with these terms was a moot point, since his English didn't run to technical vocabulary.

'"Fallout"? No, no, I think not. Why?'

He spoke to an empty space. Alex raced back upstairs to his room. A string of unspoken expletives ran through his mind as he dropped onto all fours alongside the bed and stretched under the blanket that hung to the floor. Where had it - ah, the handle, right, he panicked.

A small suitcase came into view as he pulled. It resembled the type of item an office executive might carry sandwiches in; Petrovic used it to keep his TACT unit in. He only ever got one of the status-symbol artefacts when going on holiday in Greece. Too expensive and exclusive to hand out freely otherwise and, besides which, he felt sure that one reason he received one was in fact to impress the locals with a FedCon device.

Dial the number, press the lock, insert and turn the key; presto, revealed, one Total Access Communications Terminal, slightly scratched, capable of communicating via Polsat and dedicated uplink modes or compatible non-agency transceivers. A marvel of compact communication with the FedCon world-wide. Having opened the case and turned on the TACT - source of feeble puns in English - he needed to remember the access code number sequence for the channel he wanted. Nine zero five six, Civilian Traffic, News Update, and listen …

There was no news about any explosion, nuclear or otherwise. None at all. That meant a cover-up, which by implication meant bad news, which meant bad times ahead for Alex. It was preposterous to imagine that there really would be no information about such an event because the one type of crisis impossible to hide from concerned citizens, dosimeters, sleepless satellites, luxometric scanners, aircraft, EMPaths and all was a nuclear explosion. Or, rather than a cover-up, knowing from experience how bumblingly inept the Higher Echelons could be, more probably they were sitting on the information until it could be given a pretty gloss.

Alex replaced the communicator glumly and sat on the bed. Holy Mother, he thought, look at my options now. I can stay indoors to avoid fallout, get outside to hunt down a few more facts, or leave Greece immediately. Hardly a richness of choice!

Long awareness of the Seven-tenths Rule from childhood lessons meant Alex chose the first option; stay indoors for at least forty-eight hours. While doing so he checked Radio Ellados for further updates; these remained infuriatingly low on hard facts but removed any lingering doubt that the affair had been hoaxed or a colossal mistake. From what the specialists said, given Alex's very poor Greek, the fallout seemed to be confined to a small coastal footprint.

The evening meal felt tense and unpleasant, merely eating as a form of absently passing the time. The host and his wife made themselves scarce after dining rapidly, leaving a solitary Alex looking around wondering what to do in the coming day, looking outward and inward and being bored with both. Then fate, fickle genius locii, intervened.

A stranger wandered into the taverna, dusty, drawn and not one of the villagers. He looked all around, curiously, as if he knew where he was but not what it was. Alex pushed a glass toward him and the stranger poured himself a glass of wine, nodding silently in appreciation. After emptying the glass with a thirsty relish, the man stood again, his clothing stiffened with sweat and dust. From wherever he had come, it had been on foot.

'Hello,' he said, in English. Unusual, or prescient.

'Hello,' said Alex in cautious tone.

'Would you know where to find Mister Petrovic?'

'Enosis. Taksim, varek grada kosec grada.'

McDuff and Beck both wore their serious expressions. McDuff seemed normal but Beck visibly emitted death-rays from his eyes. It seemed that Assistant Manager Beck disliked his staff: going for a holiday; going abroad for a holiday; going abroad for a holiday to a non-FedCon state. Although Alex had gone on vacations to Greece for years, Beck never seemed to be able to come to an accommodation or to appreciate leniency.

' - and finally, Mister Petravacci -' a little slip Beck frequently made apparently hinting that Alexander Dragan Petrovic was really Italian - 'make a mental note of this phrase: Enosis. Taksim varek grada kosek grada. If that phrase is used by a person in conversation when you are in Greece, then they need your urgent attention and aid. Is that clear? Urgent attention.' Beck detested having to inform travellers beyond the FedCon boundaries of this rubbish, James Bond nonsense, but UNION insisted he do it.

Alex knew the origin of the phrase. "Gnosis" had been the rallying cry of those who wanted a united Greek Cyprus, a dream long since turned to dust; "Task var. grad Kosei grad" was an old Albanian folk song in dialect, not a phrase that would ever crop up in conversation with nationalist tension running high. Last year the danger-passage had been a quote from Macbeth he couldn't remember.

'Enosis. Taksim varek grada kosek grada,' repeated the stranger, wiping his forehead with a hand that came away grimy with sweat and dirt.

'Oh yes?' enquired Alex politely. He got a sour look from his new friend.

'Don't play silly word games with me, mister. I need help.' He spoke in English, precise but accented. From a pocket he produced a tired-looking garlic sausage, wrapped in a ziplock plastic bag, almost as sweaty and dirty as himself.

'To get past the roadblocks,' he explained when Alex stared at the bagged sausage. 'Oh, there is practically no fallout. Those Demolition devices have to be clean. Here, take it.' The sausage was offered. 'DON'T eat it and be careful handling it, there's a thermally-sealed plastic ampoule inside the sausage with a water sample from Metaxas Barracks, ninety-nine per cent probability poisoned.'

The stranger didn't go into any of the details of the hair-raising activities undertaken to obtain that sample - bribery, threats, theft.

The Serb looked puzzled at his new drinking partner's description.

'You get the easy part, mister tourist. Get this sample to RSFG Munich within twelve hours. That's your assignment. It comes from the top levels of UNION so try not to screw my work up, okay?'

Oh, right, great, wonderful, fantastic! - what the hell was this lunatic on about? Cut short a holiday to take a second-hand, third-rate wurst to Germany - mad!

Mister Mad rose to leave, then paused and turned back, as if on a whim. He gave a smile more like a sneer.

'Oh. Try nine zero five seven, civilian traffic, special news review. They're running a coded confirmation. You might find it interesting.'

He left and Alex neither saw nor heard of him ever again. On the other hand, channel nine zero five seven did have coded confirmation of the "incident"; "Enosis taksim varek grada kosek grada" was the emergency catchphrase; there really was an ampoule hidden within the sausage. A nasty creeping hot-and-cold feeling came over him, working it's way from the toes upwards. Whoever or whatever the stranger had been, he was well-informed, aware what was going on.

And exactly _what_ was going on? A person (i.e. Alex) needed to carry an ampoule, with a sample of water therein, to Research Science Foundation Germany at Munich. He hadn't asked for it but an adventure had come to him unbidden and settled uncomfortably in his lap, although as yet Alex didn't think of events as an "adventure", more an "unpleasant sustained disturbance". He sat glumly on his bed upstairs, thinking slowly and carefully. The strange visitor with his salami might be an entrapment attempt by the Americans (or, less likely, the Greeks) but how could they suborn the Polsat and Internal Net news channels? By virtue of Occams Razor the bad news he almost disbelieved must be true. Unfortunately.

Should he leave Greece? Yes, a good idea, all things considered, and while leaving he might as well take that farcical sausage with him, too. No entrapment could be so bizarre, could it?

He checked his chrono; eleven hours until they expected him back in Munich. So kind of them to set him such a generous deadline. Greek customs protocol alone might take eleven hours if they felt awkward.

Problems!

A spark of resolve grew within him. So, the FedCon were unable to solve this little problem, were they? Two million of them in total and they chose to unload upon him and him alone. Well, he'd show them. Just out of spite, too.

In all, it took Alex suprisingly little time to reach the Graeco-Bulgarian border. His bill was settled in cash (the Kazaklis being sorry to see him go); bags were packed and Panos hailed on the intangible village grapevine within half an hour; it then took another hour to reach the border in Panos' automobile accompanied by the smell of sweat, hot leather, petrol and aftershave. The taxi driver reminded Alex of the Special Device, wished him luck and departed at high speed for home.

The Komotino customs post sat on a feeder road to the west of the town itself; used mainly to check articulated transport and ground-effect vehicles carrying cargo to and from Bulgaria, it was a small, low-key operation compared with the joint FedCon/Bulgarian one on the other side of the border. Normally the staff consisted of four men, two on duty, two off. Their job mostly consisted of examining paperwork and routinely passing it. Mostly. If they were annoyed or bored then to acquire a simple "Approved" stamp might take hour; this much Alex knew from previous visits and at all costs he needed to avoid such a delay, which was where the Special Device came in. Not that it looked especially device-like: a brown paper bag containing food and a small knife.

Here goes, he thought.

George and Ari sat idly playing cards together in their plastic waterproof Customs cabin. Although initially transparent, years of dust, wear, weather and hard usage had given it a translucent cover which rendered the outside world only semi-visible. This meant they didn't spot the stranger immediately. Also, he came on foot; this was unusual behaviour at this particular point on the border. Nor did the stranger carry on up to the border or the customs post. Rather, he sat calmly upon one of the worn stone walls leading there; from a brown paper bag he produced food and began eating slowly, unaware of how incongruous such behaviour seemed. George spotted the stranger whilst Ari remained intently scanning his cards.

'Hey. Ari. Look.'

''Shh.'

'Someone's on the wall.'

'Oh. Doing what?'

'Eating.'

'Not illegal.'

'Your deal. Ah, here he comes.'

'Right. Pick your cards up.'

'What for?'

'So I can't see them, stupid.'

Alex left his peeled onion half-eaten when he saw two officials leave their cosy cubicle and wave imperiously at him, their interest triggered by his standing up. He gave them a lazy, friendly wave back. They waved even harder. One made a "come here" gesture with forefinger that dispelled any ambiguity.

Oho, thought the Serb, Step One completed successfully. He got up slowly, picked up his hand luggage, looked approvingly and admiringly at the sky and started to walk. The first hurdle had been to make the customs people notice him instead of vice-versa.

'Hello,' he said, in a cheerful tone, in English. The two customs officers didn't so much as blink.

'Yes sir.'

'Can we help you sir.'

'I see you have luggage, sir.'

'Can we inspect your bags, sir.'

Certainly they could! Alex first casually opened the metal-edged secure case, revealing boxed slides by the dozen. The customs officers were interested, made obvious by the way they suddenly became quieter, although their double-act continued.

'Yes sir. What are these sir?'

'Slides.'

'Slides sir?'

'Yes. Here, let me show you. I can use this flat-screen viewer. Just give me a second. Right, these are - these six - are from the oracle at Ekope, one slide from each point of the compass and two from the middle. This shows the Doric columns; this one shows the detail in some of the seating - it's a good one, isn't it! I'm quite proud of that one. Ah, now this set are various statues on the road towards Xanthos. Two for each statue, one from the front and one from the rear, so you can judge the condition of each, and there's a reference one that shows the whole prospect. The quality of light is inconsistent in a few but the Department of Antiquities forbids anyone using illumination greater that two-thousand six hundred lux, and as you can see from the built-in flash mine is only rated at a thousand.'

Not a little bored by this monotone monologue, the two guards nodded and waved magnanimously, being familiar with the culture tourists who came to soak up Hellenic culture. They sorted through each case in a rapid and practiced manner, not missing anything, running a scanner over any object deemed worthy of study. What interested them most of all was the TACT unit Alex had clipped to his belt. They recognised the device but not why a tourist would be carrying one.

'Yes sir.'

'Satellite communicator sir. Not spying are you sir.'

'Oh, this thing? No, just regulations. I have to carry it at all times in a country out of or beyond the auspices of the Federated Concordat, since there aren't any reciprocation clauses and if there should be an accident or illness I would have to be air-ambulanced out to the nearest mandated medical site, providing that there wasn't -'

'Yes, yes, yes, sir,' interrupted one of the officials, which was a good thing since Alex would happily have paraphrased the entire Manual of Personnel Operations if needed.

'Do you have anything to declare, sir.'

'Um - well, no.'

'Why are you leaving the country sir.'

Alex gave a diffident shrug. Now he needed to angle for a little sympathy or mild derision, either would do.

'My landlord kicked me out. He said with all the troubles and the Americans messing about, he didn't want a foreigner under his roof. I had enough money to get a taxi but not much for food.'

Glad to be rid of this boring foreign oddity, the two customs officers stamped his docket, put "Approved" in Greek and English stamps on any spare space available on his luggage, then sped him on his way, still blustering about taxi fares, re-imbursement foreign policy and xenophobia. They exchanged glances, watched their visitor amble off over the brow of the hill towards the FedCon/Bulgarian customs house, looked at each other again and started to laugh; they swapped a few choice insults about stupid foreign tourists (a Slav, too, by the sound of it) and their stupid foreign ways.

They would have been considerably less amused if they had been able to see the passer-by, once out of sight, throw his paper bag away, retain a gnawed salami and stick it into a smart-card holding slot in his TACT unit; the rest of the luggage went into a ditch and a sly grin spread over Alex's face. Phase Two successfully completed; now for a quick sprint and Phase Three.

Bibor heard the buzzing coming from a great distance as if through a tunnel; gradually the sound grew louder and louder, like a circular saw cutting wood. Persistent and insistent.

Awake. He'd been asleep, not dreaming, just sleeping. And the buzz-saw noise was his alarm, flashing on and off whilst generating a hideous droning noise guaranteed to vibrate even the soundest sleeper awake. Shuddering and blinking once, he looked around. Shit. Still on the Iceberg. According to his alarm there was still half an hour before his duty started. Christ, it felt like a quantum jump from Senior Supervisor to Deputy; he still hadn't adjusted to it; he was still apprehensive that his tour of duty aboard ICE07 might be extended because of his promotion. Still - those three extra increments on the pay scale would be highly welcome; maybe he could repaint the gloomy grey cubby-hole that laughingly masqueraded as his cabin.

Right. Now for the four "S's". Christ, about the only decent thing about cabin B7 was the personal shower cubicle. That was how he woke up of a morning. After a few weeks you no longer noticed how stale and flat the recycled water was, nor did you dwell much on the nature, exactly, of recycled water.

Dressed in a regulation blue jump-suit, orange life-preserver, green lace-ups and utility belt, Bibor jogged easily through corridor after corridor on his "morning" constitutional, an exercise routine aided by the miniscule gravity aboard the Iceberg. An occasional member of staff would nod to him as they stood aside to let him by. An earlink monitor kept him au fait until he trotted over to the central stairwell and leapt for the ladder, using his hands and feet to slide down. A neat trick. Less neat if someone happened to be sliding up the down ladder as he was descending it, but low-g collisions weren't too painful.

'Morning all! How fares the world; Duty Officer update, please.'

A harassed-looking woman checked through a greenscreen and began to recite a list of incidents: Graeco-Turkish hostility had climbed yet another point on the Henderson scale; a submarine freighter had fouled an undersea fish retainer in the English Channel; there was a corruption scandal on the Russian bourse; Munich Research had their sample; September Station had carried out a successful interdiction; a typhoid epidemic was sweeping through the Campo in Mexico, denied by the Mexican government, confirmed by the FedCon teams on the ground there. The Duty Officer, a lanky Swede ill-designed for the cramped orbital environment of ICE07, looked peevishly at her superior, wondering how it was possible to be so vivacious and informed this early in the day.

Knowing all the methods of "enhancing" long and boring periods of duty, Bibor sniffed at an ashtray, trying to detect tobacco. He looked in the dead spaces between island-consoles and found a disposable wrapper for a sandwich. Tut tut. Food was not allowed on duty. Looking between two other consoles Bibor found a full wrapper. He could hear the technicians silently cursing their over-inquisitive overseer.

'Tut tut,' he said, holding the offending article up between thumb and forefinger. 'Naughty. Lose it.'

One of the technicians looked aggrieved. Bibor gave her a withering look. Shouldn't have got caught, should you, madam.

'Just a minute - what was that about Munich?' The Duty Officers precise suddenly came back to him. 'RSFG got their sample? That was damned quick.'

He checked the wall chrono: six hours (and seven minutes) until the deadline elapsed, Colonel Weiss would be happy indeed, because he had worried about missing the delivery time after his uncharacteristic lapse. Next time (if or when there was a next time) he'd told supervisors, there would be precisely no rash promise to deliver anything whatsoever.

'Fenestre. Atria,' he snapped, very businesslike. 'Hello sir. Good news.'

Upon receiving the news, Weiss relaxed a little in his fluid swivel-seat, gently moving it from side to side to the discomfiture of his aide. Well. Six hours was not a long time considering the personnel and resources RSFG could apply to a problem. Had he been a smoker he would have lit a cigarette; as a confirmed non-smoker he merely sucked a mint. Now, all that remained was for Munich to analyse their sample and pronounce their findings, hopefully within six hours.

'Ah, sir, how soon do we need those seven new members?' asked his visitor, Olukaside.

'Pardon? Oh, them. Yesterday. Why ask? You know we always need new inductees.'

The Nigerian nodded.

'As a suggestion, sir, why not try the courier who carried that sample to RSFG from Greece? It means only six others to look for. From what Bibor told me he seems, er, appropriate.'

Yes. Appropriate. Forging a Red Card through faintly criminal family contacts and bluffing a route across four countries, nonchalantly depositing a crumpled paper bag with half a pitta and a salami in RSFG Reception and declaring it to be their "poison polony". Such behaviour smacked of dishonesty and, Weiss thought, we could use a person like that. Still, since he hadn't been pre-selected and vetted perhaps an Eagle Three would be advisable.

4) Unveiled

BADFORT TOWERS

LONDON

Alex looked out over his balcony at the dull British Skies laded with rain, promising a deluge. At least the phototropic smogs were gone, a memory of autumns past. All he needed to contend with now was the grating contrast between modern, Integrated Britain - part of the FedCon and up to the millisecond in terms of technology, time, pace, taste and fashion - and Greece, an Isolate nation that looked to the distant past and it's heritage from antiquity to survive contemporary strife.

Transition would have been easier if he hadn't made a frenetic journey across Europe within hours of meeting "Mister Mad" at the Kazaklis' taverna. There would, doubtless, be repercussions about his using a Red Card facsimile freely to bluff a passage by VSTOL from that airfield in Bulgaria, easily the most difficult and stressful part of the whole enterprise; and the ride to Pristina airport; and the jet from there … well, They had wanted a delivery within twelve hours, hadn't They? Oddly enough, in retrospect, the whole affair had been exciting enough for him to regret completing it.

He gripped the warm balcony railing tight, himself in the grip of an un-named emotion that defied analysis but which an observer might have called an unease within the soul. Diverting himself, he looked at the skies to judge the weather, calculating that there wouldn't be any stargazing, nor any chess games with El Quatro. Which reminded him; at a cursory examination his telescope seemed to have shifted orientation slightly. Perhaps a bird perched on it, although he felt almost positive that birds were extinct within the London boundaries. Maybe a migrant.

Turning from the drab sky, he cast a knowing eye over the apartment from his balcony vantage, then re-entered, shutting the louvre doors behind him. Ever since moving in he'd had trouble from those doors; despite being so many floors up in a secure condominium set in a quiet residential area the alarm used to insist on chiding him should be leave the doors ajar or incorrectly locked. Eventually consulting a technical manual, he'd taken a pair of cable-cutters to the logic centre; the doors no longer squawked when left half-shut.

Oh the wonders of technology. Still, there were some decent things to be said about it. Fridges, for one thing; he had yet to encounter a properly working one in Greece. Apparently due to the exigencies of embargo and American supply, only the rich could afford them. A minor item, you might think, but when a person wanted a cold tube of beer it was a major disappointment to be presented with a tepid one.

He caught himself mentally. Cold tubes of lager? Jesus, Alex, remember Mexico. There is more to life than pandering to a dry throat. Somewhere in the world people are dying from dehydration and you worry about a cold drink.

Slightly less complacent, with a (cold) tube of lager clutched in his hand, Alex found his favourite fluid-seat to settle in. He decided to test one of the major technological differences between Greece and Britain, a true embodiment of FedCon-powered research and design as applied to conspicuous consumer consumption.

To his infinite disgust, the main subscriber selection now showing was "Pander", a game show of witless, lowest-denomination catering to bad taste. Put simply, people rang in to the studio to request guests, celebrities and presenters to perform explicitly degrading acts. The last time Alex encountered it he had rashly kicked the set and bruised his toes. Now he merely turned it off and fumed quietly. Greece definitely had something going for it. Any desire to vegetate in front of a television program, even a quality public channel one, flew out of the window. To make an insult more injurious, the picture quality had improved. Perhaps the London atmospherics had improved: it certainly cost enough in the anti-pollution surcharges for him to wish that true.

Bibor stood uncomfortably before his superior, Weiss. Bad news was always unpleasant to impart and it rarely earned those unfortunate to bear it any great reward either. All the more unpleasant when the bad news concerned a matter that Weiss had raised himself Bibor felt like the carrier of funeral tidings.

As requested seven people had been vetted. And Alexander Petrovic as well. Weiss raised his eyebrows a little at that: why was the Serb assessed separately, making a total of eight in all? That brought forward the news Bibor liked least. He showed Weiss the vetting report.

VETTING REPORT

SAVER 1037

SUBJECT: PETROVIC, ALEXANDER DRAGAN

FEDREGNO: 0772725436

STATUS: C.I.P.R.O. FILE (QV)

LOC:

FIL:

TUN:

ACT: PENDING

VETTING TEAM: S.I.E. VAN; I.O. CLEMENTS; I.O. KUREISHI

INSPECTING SUPERVISOR'S REPORT FOLLOWS:

Eagle Three carried out as per instructions (q.v. standing orders). During check following anomalies were detected under the terms of Contract (Contract Violations)

1) a) Apartment status: E3 subject currently owns in perpetuity 5 room apartment in secure condominium development, no rental, lease or sub-let in evidence, implying assets in excess of £250,000.

b) Subject currently owns Ford Khan Series 4 mod, market resale value est. £20,000 as at date of E3.

c) During premises search 1.5 kilos of loose-leaf tea (variety unknown) plus 0.5 kilos of coffee beans were discovered, market value total £3000.

d) 10cm refracting telescope (see below). Insurance documents indicate value of £27,000

2) a) Subject's salary £120,000 p.a. Savings £37,000.

b) No other source of income discovered. Further investigation necessary.

3) Atypical selection of specialist literature in view of subject's overtly anti-militarist stance

4) a) Telescope, as above, mounted on tripod.

b) Wehrmacht-surplus laser-sight mounted co-axially with telescope.

c) Austrian compensator mechanism attached to telescope mounting.

5) Downloading of information in personal computer reveals coded instructions to unknown third party (no decrpyt available at present). No indication of nature of user, communication or recipient.

After reading Weiss looked thoughtfully at his desk for a long time, thinking about the implications of the report. Substantial hidden income undeclared for several years, source unknown. It sounded very damaging for the subject, not to mention Weiss for having chosen him. Finally he spoke.

'Carry on with the recruitment selection, but go through an Eagle Two with Petrovic. If he comes through cleanly, make him the Offer. If not, if he's working for another power, disappear him.'

'Terminal Sanction?'

'Yes. Officially noted and approved as Terminal Sanction.' FedCon didn't kill double-agents, that would be immoral; no, they sent them to undertake hazardous duty at McMurdo Sound or at the bottom of the Philippines Trench.

Weiss dismissed Bibor. There was a sub-committee meeting scheduled for two hours beginning shortly and he still had to assimilate the necessary information for it. He wanted a report from September Station and RSFG Munich, too. As a replacement Bibor still failed to completely manage the routine details yet. Damn Chernovsky, wherever he was. By now the Russian had been declared officially "Lost". He could have been kidnapped, killed, defected, got amnesia, fallen ill - nobody knew what had befallen him, but the longer he remained absent the more likely it became that foul play was involved. As if he didn't have enough to cope with. In fact, while he remembered …

'Fenestre. Rossi.'

There was a slight delay until the call was acknowledged.

'Rossi here, sir,' came the fluid, accented English.

'Rossi, I'd like you to take up the matter of Sample A and Munich RSFG and the problem of how to hurry them along. Use my direct authority; in fact, take the Sky Clipper Downside and see them in person. They've taken far too long to assay. I take it you are familiar with their instructions?'

'Oh yes, sir.' Of course Rossi was; Weiss kept his staff on their toes and expected them to be informed. 'I'm on my way.'

Good. Rossi was reliable. He could be relied upon to bark loudly at people and get results, losing his temper just enough to make things go faster.

Fidelio Guido Rossi had been catching up with current affairs while on the observation deck, sitting in one of the seclusion cubicles watching a screen, when the call came through. Realising it was confidential he plugged in his earlink and so prevented anyone else from overhearing his conversation. After switching off Rossi dialled the Duty Officer to check on the next departure window. He bullied a little to get clearance for Number Three Shuttle, the solo pilot model; it went faster than the others and he wanted to get Downside quickly. He unplugged a flying suit from the rack in the Ready Room, signed out the suit and a helmet from the Sub-Flight Monitor and went through the airlock and into the shuttle bay. It took a few minutes to reach Number Three, clambering carefully over the walkway that skirted the other shuttles, reserved for emergency use. The small shuttle he wanted to use didn't have the large, luxurious airlocks of the other models so he needed all his innate agility to wasp himself inside the coffin-sized airlock and into the cockpit. After five minutes of pre-flight checks and warm-ups, getting to 94 effective, he traded banter with the Sub-Flight Monitor and asked for permission to leave ICE07.

Lights in the gloomy hangar blinked and flashed, a sequence of red and yellow warnings; a klaxon sounded within the Iceberg to warn crew that a shuttle would be departing in seconds, not to worry about loud noises and structural vibration. This would be the Italian's first time on a solo shuttle flight, but he didn't feel nervous, he'd got over 150 hours on the shuttles already and travelling Downside would be the easy part; returning to the Iceberg, riding a radar beam to dock with a moving body, now _that_ was un-nerving. Rossi secured himself with the seat harness and retainer cage, then tapped his earlink monitor. Working. Good.

Solid metal clunked and scraped outside, transmitting the sound only through the structure of Number Three shuttle. Rossi uncovered, unlatched and pressed the Big Red Switch to release the parking clamps. A shudder ran through both pilot and craft as the eight mechanical feet let go; now only the magnetic dolly held Shuttle Three in place on the induction rail, "only" a misnomer since it could hold an object of up to two hundred and fifty tonnes. Ahead a wall slowly split along the seam marked with yellow and black hazard stripes; beyond it was another similar door that remained shut. Shuttle Three moved into the airlock this created and the "wall" shut behind it. More lights were coming on, now, enough to accustom a pilot to light outside. Finally the outside wall parted to spill actinic light on the parking bay. Rossi hastily polarised his helmet, not wanting to get his vision affected by the sunlight sweeping over him. Finger on the throttle, he felt the shuttle lurch forward and arrow off the induction rail, outwards into an indigo sky. There was a brief, disorienting weightlessness before gravity reasserted itself as the aircraft began to dive. Rossi did a quick visual check, then a radar scan to detect any nearby traffic. There wasn't any: the Iceberg flew in it's own special "box" and other aircraft, sub-orbital or otherwise, kept well away if they were wise. He turned on the Pilot's Friend. This left him free to concentrate with both hands on a greenscreen detailing his mission brief, namely to chase RSFG Munich and Sample A, courtesy of his temper and tongue. For more rapid results he ought to land at Bergen-op-Gauss airstrip, the satellite facility that served RSFG itself. He punched up the codes and fed them into the Pilot's Friend, then sat back for the twenty minute journey.

However, it was not to be. Five minutes away from Bergen-op-Gauss, his aircraft suffered total systems failure and despite all the efforts of its pilot the shuttle fell out of the sky and destroyed itself in a terminal dive.

Alex at work: diligent, conscientious, motivated. He concentrated on the "Techna" range that had sprung into being during his absence; one of the wonders of FedCon was the way it occasionally leapt upon ideas and turned them into actualities with a startling speed utterly divorced from the prosaic committee-base procedural. His outline sketch of a series aimed, via television, at children had reached the planning stage with an in-house design team already assigned. He knew one of these involved, Chellakooty, and wasn't too pleased about it. The man was a neo-monetarist, profit-powered, not the person to design toys for kids.

MacDuff at work: he gave his Serbian minion a very peculiar look. He wondered how such things were possible, repeatedly, looking every time the thought struck him. No answer came to mind so he clocked-off for lunch. Peter immediately turned on his radio, hidden in a desk drawer. Someone else produced a hip flask full of anonymous liquid and passed it rapidly around. Neil finished reading a comic purchased earlier in the day. Alex looked at them all in turn with amused circumspection because if he guessed right -

MacDuff bounced back into the room unexpectedly.

'PUT THAT AWAY! TURN IT OFF! DON'T TOUCH THAT!'

His staff leapt upright in either surprise or guilt. The Scot glared at everyone with uniform venom and left for a second time.

Shortly after, Neil and Alex clocked off, riding an express lift to the main staff canteen together. Neil finished reading his comic (a nasty, violent, adult-oriented publication that had nothing comic about it) during the ride, Alex stared at a public information poster years old, that remained the only decoration within the lift. All four corners had been ripped away and graffiti scrawled on it. Some wit of years past had carefully amended the official poster message to read

MARS_HMELLOW_ NEEDS YOUR BONDS_AGE_

The floor heaved, the door pinged and gaped wide.

'Come on, the food's calling,' said Neil, ambling out.

Both chose Lasagni Nuovo al Pesci (that is, processed krill) as their main course. Alex beat Neil to a piece of bread and watched the other successively take a packet of crisps, an apple, a doughnut and a slice of processed cheesecake that always seemed to taste of synthetic chemical agents.

'That,' mumbled a masticating Neil, between mouthfuls of lasagne, 'was a particularly nasty trick of MacDuff's. He caught us.'

Alex wagged a chiding finger.

'Of course. I could predict it. You people ought to know better.'

During the afternoon a collection went around in aid of refugees in Algeria; Alex suddenly considered asking for a transfer out of CI and back to the DRA again. Lots of acronyms but basically a move from pen-pushing to people-aiding. He felt a vague sense of uneasy guilt, a response that begged an epiphany of some sort, although he didn't articulate matters so consciously. How could he sit at home and squander his life doing nothing positive when - amongst other catastrophes - thousands were dying of privation in the Maghreb's refugee slums?

Marie tapped him on the shoulder, trying to attract his attention but enveloped in melancholia, he'd totally failed to notice her and her collection bucket. He blushed, thinking that she might feel he had been deliberately avoiding a donation; that made certain he poured all the loose change from his pocket into the collection. Marie beamed - what a nice man!

MacDuff dumped a large wad of memory-paper in front of Alex.

'Right, friend Petrovic. I want you to format all this info, index it and then do a search on the seven - here, on this sheet - the seven criteria. By, oh, Friday morning stats call. Can you manage that? Get a clerk to help you do the legwork tomorrow.'

The Scot felt especially annoyed at catching his staff slacking. Although he wouldn't admit it, even to himself, Petrovic had gotten the work because he'd complete it in time - even though it was actually enough for two people.

Mrs. Petrovic's son decided to leave work early. He felt bored and fretful, wanting out of the office-prison of South Benford, for today at least. Neil waived the usual lift, having a lengthy evening appointment with a bar.

Despite leaving early, traffic was bad. A three-car road train had shed it's load and overturned a kilometre from the underground car-park at South Benford. Police bollards, cars, men and a helicrane were mustered around the wreckage, live invert midwives. A big, full, dark green bag seeping blood lay on the paving, a handbreadth from cars crawling past, doubtless containing the mortal remains of the road-train driver. Alex turned on the radio and punched in a station he knew, run by Albanian immigrants and broadcasting traditional Balkan music. A song came snaking out of the speakers, about valiant Shqiperi resisting Ottoman onslaught, vaunting blood, thunder and sacrifice.

Christ preserve us, thought Alex with a light overlay of despair, I can well do without this.

After fifty minutes the traffic stream began to break up and accelerate. The delay resulted from a series of secondary accidents, idiot drivers who rashly attempted to overtake in the opposing lane to make up lost time. Once en route for Badfort Towers Alex set the Khan to automatic, settled back in his seat and began to doze, knowing that when "thinking" the car took the safest, slowest route.

The car's grating metallic voice rasped from the cheap Dutch speakers and brought him back to full consciousness, informed that they had mutually arrived safely.

Home again home again. Or subterranean car-park in this case. One of the overhead strip lights was out completely, another flickered erratically and (of course) they lit the area directly around the lift entrance. Shadows leapt at each fluorescent blink, monochrome monsters. That image of a body in a bag, seeping blood, came back to Alex. He shuddered. Suddenly, the cavernous parking spaces seemed bleak and hostile.

Nothing vile leapt at him from the gloom on the way to the lift, but as the doors opened _something_ lunged at him -

'Christ!' he exclaimed in surprise and fright, jumping backwards.

The tall man in a Day-Glo trenchcoat regained his balance, stooped to retie the lace that tripped him, cast a suspicious glance at Alex and departed.

False alarm.

Alex laughed quietly and nervously to himself as he rode upwards. Twitchy. He produced his MagIC key before the lift stopped and strolled down the corridor, keeping a weather eye on Number Seven where the couple dubbed the "Gruesome Twosome" lurked. Occasionally they would glare out at people from a barely-open door for no obvious reason, two very old women (or possibly men) totally at odds with their neighbourhood and environment.

Today they remained indoors. Alex nodded sagely at their absence, as if he had some influence over them. He pushed the key cylinder home and waited until the door slid open with a hiss, extracted the key and dodged through before the door closed again. Odd. There seemed to be a funny smell, faint but discernible, in the hallway. A fire - or did he leave that slow-cooker on this morning? Visions of a completely melted kitchen sprang to life in his fertile imagination. Dropping his file-case, he kicked open the lounge door so he could hurry through tot the kitchen -

'Hello Alex,' said a stranger sat in front of the television viewing screen. A second, very large, stranger standing alongside the first merely nodded towards him.

- thieves. Burglars. Shit, these apartments were supposed to be impregnable - how'd they manage to get in? Kitchen, get to the kitchen, the mono-blade knives were there, get one of those.

He got to the kitchen doorway before a third stranger suddenly appeared in front of him from nowhere (afterwards he realised the man had been hiding behind the vertical storage units). About to lash out, Alex restrained himself when Stranger Number Three pointed a sinister-looking tubular device directly at his stomach. He didn't know what it was but didn't want to discover through painful experience.

'Now, whey don't we all sit down and have a nice cup of tea,' said the stranger in a remarkably bland voice.

Following a gesture from the armed man with his weapon, Alex walked backwards to the sofa.

'Sit down please Alex.'

Alex sat. His interlocutor seemed able to speak without punctuation or emotional emphasis. Nor, it seemed, was he paying any attention to the flat owner. Instead he devoted his entire attention to the viewing screen, showing a commercial channel.

'Hey, I like this one,' snickered the armed man.

Great, thought the victim. A moron, a monosyllabic goggler and a piece of furniture. Three beauties. Who were they? Thieves simply didn't behave like this.

A grim advert about Hepatitis D began running, giving details of how dangerous the disease could be, how relatively cheap the vaccine, could you afford to risk your health or that of your loved ones?

'Really,' sighed the watcher. 'If you believed all of them you'd just give up and die.' Seemingly losing interest, he turned to his aides and nodded. Clearly this sign-shorthand meant "back off and cease causing this person distress", because both did so.

'You can relax now. A little.'

He _still_ wasn't looking at Alex. Then he raised a hand and one of the minions went to work in the kitchen. Alex, meantime, looked around his apartment, half-seeing things. To his mild surprise and considerable curiosity there were no signs of damage or disturbance; the bookcase remained neatly ordered, the tapes and disks alphabetically arranged, card table undisturbed and the chess game as it had been, balcony doors firmly shut. From the very brief view he'd gotten of the kitchen there didn't seem to have been any pillage there, either.

Clinking sounds came from within the kitchen. Alex noticed that his computer interface had been turned on and left running, as the power light remained glowing. A sudden hard knot of fear formed in his stomach out of the already present anxiety. Had they been snooping around on his private library file? And were they capable of code-breaking? Could they be blackmailers?

A thick silence persisted for minutes: only a muted hissing from the viewing screen echoed sullenly around the room. Stranger Number Three re-emerged from the kitchen with one of the old melamine trays clasped firmly in both hands. Placing it carefully between Mister Bland and Alex, he indicated in turn a teapot, two cups, a small jug of milk, a bowl of sugar, two teaspoons and a strainer.

Mister Bland inspected the tray carefully.

'Careful. Everything on that tray is valuable. So is the tray.' He seemed to know property value. And to have some respect for it, too. Odd but encouraging.

Number Three, surprisingly, had managed to make a decent cup of tea, which Alex found surprising because with the advent of synthetics a great British tradition had dried up and died.

'Now, to business. We shouldn't really be doing this, strictly; it's against regulations. But I simply couldn't resist. Real tea, you know. Ah, money!'

Alex reached for a teaspoon, a stretching action mis-interpreted by Number Two, who abruptly strode forward and grasped Alex's shoulder in an agonising, paralysing grip, sending needles of pain shooting into his deltoid. Mister Bland opened his eyes slightly wider, then waved the muscleman off with a languid gesture.

'So sorry. Where were we? Oh yes.'

Mister Bland's vague demeanour remained vague, yet his eyes met Alex's directly and the latter had the uncomfortable feeling that beneath his uninvited guest's sheeplike exterior lay a far deadlier creature.

"Regulations"? Where did they get that phrase from?

'Um - regulations about what?'

'Oh, didn't I say, how very ah, remiss, of me. We're from FedCon.'

Good - not thieves. Bad - probably investigators.

'Ah - I take it that you're not the Stationery Supplies people then.'

'Goodness no.'

'Ah. Internal Audit, then.' Alex deepened his voice and raised it to project as effectively as possible. 'Well LET ME SEE SOME IDENTITY THEN!' he bellowed.

Mister Bland lost his cool to the extent of raising his eyebrows. One hand snaked into an inner pocket and reappeared with, of all things, a Red Card.

'This one, incidentally, is real.'

Alex examined it closely. Lots of ornate motile holograms. Real. Oh dear. The only people who carried cards like this were (cue sinister minor chords) UNION. Never mind his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen were now playing games, twitching nervously. Mister Bland sipped delicately at his drink.

'Nice tea, Alex, very nice. Real tea leaves, too, I notice. You've got kilos of it. Costing, say, nine months salary?'

Under this unpleasantly accurate questioning Alex felt himself blush. True, all true.

'Hmm. Yes. Drove home, didn't you? Nice to have an automatic in the car, isn't it. Mind you, mine took a bank loan to buy. Still making the repayments. I see you own yours.'

Another hit close to home.

'And some home you have here. Lounge, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, guestroom, hall and balcony - complete with telescope - overlooking the suburbs. In a secure condominium. You don't lease or hire or rent or contract because you own it outright, Alex. Goodness me. Expensive, what? I've got a wife and child, Alex. Even though I'm better paid than you I can't afford something like this.'

Nobody spoke for a while.

'And about that telescope, Alex.'

That was how he said it, with a literal full stop, the type of verbal device that meant more news of a worse nature to come.

'There's evidence on that computer of communication, via your signalling laser, with one of the Lunaville sites.'

SHIT! Thought Alex a his stomach dropped half a metre at least whilst the blushes were replaced by a bilious paleness.

'Let me put it to you, Mister Petrovic, that you work for a hostile agency, probably American, and that you are in return paid by them. That is how you can afford this little residence. Also you have a contact in the Foreign Assignment section of your offices. You collect and transmit information to the American base on the moon; your annual visit to Greece is simply a cover for the annual meeting with your controller. Stop me when I start to bore you. What you didn't -'

Alex waved his hands to stop the accusations.

'No no no! What the hell do you mean, "a contact"? I've never … Christ Risen, you're mad!'

Silence reigned again, this time with a gloating essence to it. One of the ambulatory pieces of furniture moved forward to place a small, unfolded square of paper between the two seated drinkers. From the appearance it seemed to be a name and address, although at this range Alex couldn't resolve the writing and didn't recognise it anyway.

'Your contact from Foreign Assignment. An amateur. Why did they leave this lying around? Sloppy.'

Alex recovered his emotional equilibrium slightly. Alright, they had discovered two of his more guilty secrets but this nonsense about a "contact" - that could surely only be an attempt to muddy waters because they (the ever-present authoritarian "THEY") lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him. Sledgehammer and nut.

Mister Bland still hadn't finished.

'In fact I don't think you're really Alex Petrovic. You're an imposter.'

Alex felt utterly floored. His jaw even sagged a little while he listened.

'No. Not the real Petrovic. You took his place when he got abducted across the Mexican border eight years ago and you've taken his place.'

'Nice fairy story,' said the Serb, voice dripping with sarcastic poison.

'Oh. Explain away all this, then,' retorted Bland with a scornful sneer and an expansive wave of the hand. 'Your flat and car and money, Petrovic. How do you explain possession. How!'

Yes, you'd like that, let me do the work for you in an admission. Why should I say anything at all -

'You may be wondering what leverage we have, Petrovic,' began Mister Bland, apparently able to read minds. 'Let me tell you what we have.

'One. Proscribed transmissions to and from the Moon.

Two. Undeclared income, in excess of two point five million in total.

Three. Evidence of complicity in conspiracy.

Four. Illegal imports from outside Federated Concordat-bounded territory.

Five. Defiance of and deliberate lying to a FedCon officer.

'All told, Alex, we could send you down for this. "Down" literally. Offences like this mean the Philippines Trench, or hard labour at the Pole, or maybe even despatch to the Moon.'

Despite these word's even tone there was pent-up emotion underlying them.. From what Alex saw he was in big trouble; although his interrogator might have exaggerated those penalties slightly, their effect would be horrendous. They made it clear to him that sentences would run serially, not concurrently. What he long feared as a background anxiety now looked to have become reality.

'Okay, okay, you want the true story, you'll get it.'


	10. Chapter 10

5) Another Country

SOUTH BENFORD TOWER

5:30 PM

Neil cadged a lift from Alex when they both clocked off at half past five. There was an ulterior motive; his friend's demeanour remained reserved and withdrawn all day long, much more so than usual. Normally Alex could be relied upon for a few droll comments or a bizarre Serbian aphorism that he probably fabulated, but not today. Neil wanted to find out why, but no enlightenment fell unfolded during the journey.

'Want to come up to mine?' asked Neil, when the car slowed, preparatory to letting the passenger dismount. The driver paused to think, momentarily, then nodded without any discernible delay. On they drove, still not talking. Neil put the radio on without asking. Christ, cheer up you miserable git, he thought uncharitably, no-one's died, have they. They parked near the small row of shops where Neil lived. Alex activated the BurglArrester; Neil whistled a small boy over and gave him a five-pound coin with instructions to guard the Khan. Before going up to the flat, Neil visited the Patel's corner grocery for a few little bits and pieces.

Alex hadn't visited Neil since the latter's move from Tottenham and took the opportunity to examine the surroundings. The flat sat in the middle of a row, built above the shops, ancient but well-built and still comparatively cheap by the ridiculous London standards. To enter they traversed the back street to a flight of concrete steps that led upwards to the level of the back doors. Ancient, crusted glass milk bottles lay abandoned on the walkway and a stray cat ran away from them.

The flat must have been old; it still had manual locks set into the door. Alex looked on with interest as Neil produced, inserted and cranked round a flat metal key.

'There. Welcome to the hovel,' announced Neil. 'Eric? You in?' A muffled shout issued from upstairs. That would be Neil's flatmate Eric, a student at the London College of Economics, who usually sat barricaded into his bedroom by books.

Inside, the flat manifested an air of complete chaos, as per normal for one of Neil's residences. Old papers lay everywhere, books with broken spines lolled on chairs, cups with cold dregs set up occupancy on every flat surface.

'Okay, sit down. Tea? Righto, coming up.' Off he went to throw dishes around in the kitchen, whistling gaily. Minutes later he reappeared with a tray, carrying two mugs of tea. To Alex's surprise Neil failed to turn on the viewing-screen; normally the television began playing the instant Neil arrived and didn't cease until the small hours of the morning.

'Tell me about it,' suggested Neil, matter-of-factly.

Alex cocked his head to one side, suspiciously. Could Neil be working for Them? No, surely not … no, certainly not.

Alex plunged in head-first. Or is that feet-first? he wondered.

'You've always asked me where and how I got all my money and I've never told you, because it was private. Well, last night the UNION broke into my flat to ask me that same question.'

Hang on, thought Neil, _I'm_ the union steward - what's he on about, breaking into his flat?

'Why would the union do that!'

'No, no you misunderstand me. U-N-I-O-N was what I meant.'

'"UNION". The spy people,' said Neil, frankly and blankly surprised.

'Yes! Yes.'

'Why! Alex, the only people who check up on us are Internal Audit.'

'Yes, well, I did some work for UNION in Greece, I can't say what so don't ask. I am in very big trouble, very deep shit, Neil. My guilty secrets. Oh, hell, why not tell you. They'll find out anyway. The money. I wrote a book on history years ago, a book on military history from antiquity to modern times in the Balkans, with emphasis on how the landscape affected affairs.'

Neil blinked again. Military history? Alex? The Serb was keen on history, everyone knew that, but he expressed

nothing but loathing for armies and war.

'Might I ask why you wrote about what you hate?'

'Oh, as a diversion when I was in the army. Don't look so surprised! We still have conscription. Well, to stop myself from going mad from boredom and abuse I wrote a book, using the divisional library. A long story. Anyway, the government took it up as an official publication. They gave me a lump sum and annual royalties from then on. So, er, I ended up with a lot of money. I bought my first apartment, my telescope, a car. Half of the money went to my family, in my mother's name. But I never declared any of it, I thought "it's my money, my work and I earned it before I ever joined FedCon so it's none of their business."'

Neil nodded, seeing that this obviously violated protocol yet didn't justify the use of an UNION search team on personal premises. His sense of incredulity stretched further with Alex's next revelation.

'Er - then I made a really big mistake. I started to communicate with someone in Lunaville Four, playing chess, swapping non-political gossip via a signalling laser. And I kept all the records on my own database. In code, but that didn't help much.'

'Oh God Alex you fucking moron! They could send you down the Philippines Trench for this - illegal earnings, talking to the Moon - to the _Americans_ on the Moon - , proscribed encoding - Jesus, they could have you grinding ice in McMurdo Sound! Buying a flat and a car and a telescope …' Neil was aghast.

Having his friend unwittingly echo the UNION visitor's threats did nothing for Alex's composure. From a vague, nagging anxiety his fears blossomed into a nightmare. A feral flower, indeed. The worst had yet to come. He explained that the interlopers left without arresting him.

'Oh great. Terrific. Don't worry, they'll be back. With a catch like you, they'll be back.'

Neil Nicholson shook his head in wonder. Alex had a chequered past, of that he was well aware, but a spy with an illegal source of income, who'd broken The Law As Graven In Stone by talking to Americans on the Moon - this ground felt dangerous indeed. It was hard to believe that the conversation had even occurred. Out of reflex he turned to the viewer, switching it on, giving it a swift wipe to remove static-acquired dust. There should be a can of anti-stat around but he couldn't locate it in the general chaos. What happened now? (Irrelevant burbling from the speaker about desert reclamation and the future it promised with "maximum return for minimal investment"). Were there any options open or not?

'You could volunteer to work for them. That would pre-empt any move they might try. After all, you said that you worked for them before.'

'What! You're joking. No way. I am not going to abase myself to them. Forget it.'

'Go to Mars?'

'Be serious.' Hardly a sensible idea. You needed a degree just to be a floor-cleaner on Mars.

'I am - Alex, your options are a bit limited. The Manual totally forbids everything you've done.'

They stared at each other gloomily. Neil left for a second, visited the kitchen and returned with eight plastic shrink-wrapped cans of beer. They had a vacuum jacket and were very cold when the seals got popped. Alex held one in both hands, rolling it against his forehead. He thought about the recent past.

Eric came downstairs after finishing his homework schedule, wanting to catch a programme on at half-ten, about the Callisto Mining Corporation. His field of study competence was Xenological Geology, an obstruse area touched on in the programme. In he walked, kicking a fax out of his way, to be greeted by even more mess than usual, empty cans lying around and a frowning, dark-complexioned stranger with a moustache slouched in one seat.

'Evening. This is Alex. Alex, Eric. Ah, could you get another eight full ones out of the chiller?'

Eric huffed slightly.

'Why can't you?'

'Because I'm too pissed.'

Eric went. When he returned the viewer, now tuned to a pirate channel, showed "adult animations" - ultra-violent cartoons. He sighed. So much for science and education.

Eight cans later all three were inebriated, Eric being chirpy, Neil swearing profusely and Alex being dour and glowering sourly. It felt worse than the bottom line in Mexico, he thought.

'Why did Mister UNION man accuse you of not being - uh, not you?' asked Neil, remembering a question he'd thought of earlier after his friend described yesterday's events. Not using any swear words because it was a serious question and merited a serious answer.

'Split personality?' suggested Eric, feeling that UNION must be rather dim-witted to investigate this saturnine but rather staid Serbian.

'Split? Split? Oh, I see, not the town. No.' Alex sounded scornfully dismissive. 'I got captured by the Americans, abducted overnight from Mexico.'

Both his listeners were abruptly silent. They continued to listen in semi-reverential silence as Alex told of his time, serving in the Disaster Relief Agency during Project Morning Glory - the aid-and-succour programme in Mexico, helping the Americano refugees in their camps.

It (the story, that is) began well before Morning Glory, with the accession to power within the New America Party of an unduly radical, xenophobic clique; known as the "Ousters", they deployed considerable behind-the-scenes influence in addition to their overt power. One essential part of their policy was the indefinite extension of the State of Emergency that had suspended the Constitution, allowing the NAP to crowbar itself into power in the first place. The second essential part of their strategy began with the disenfranchisement of non-Americans. To them, "non-Americans" meant, predominantly, the Hispanic and Negro population alongside Catholics, Indians, Asians, non-WASPs of all descriptions, who would be gradually reduced in status to third-class citizens without a franchise. Any rebellious or objecting parties were despatched to the grim Census Control Centres of Utah and Nevada. Having first secured its grip on power and ensuring that no milksop democratic backlash would succeed, the NAP created an underclass and set out to exploit them, blaming any flaws in "Fortress America" on them. It was a depressingly old story and strategy, with one great asset (for the NAP): it worked. Or, that is, it worked at first. The loss of American pre-eminence in the world didn't do the NAP any harm, either.

Gradually the Hispanic populations gravitated south, under varying pressures over time. Whenever a particularly severe pogrom took place, tens of thousands of Americanos would cross the border, in differing states of panic. Frequently all they possessed were their clothes. Mexico became a reluctant host, keeping refugees in squalid encampments just below the line of the Rio Bravo del Norte, not wanting any integration of them into the Mexican population since the ruling junta feared they might carry dangerous political ideas with them. After a decade of increasing population within the semi-permanent ghettos, FedCon moved in. Project Morning Glory was intended to set up an infra-structure parallel to the notoriously inefficient, under-staffed, under-paid and endemically corrupt Mexican administration of the camps. There existed great scope for improvements: sanitation, construction, education, agriculture, health projects, self-help packages and many sub-divisions of these.

Lack of sufficient foreknowledge prejudiced Morning Glory's chances of success. Because the Mexican government refused to properly integrate refugees, there had never been an official census in the rash of settlements that straggled along the border zone. Rumour had it that officials thought of a number, added six noughts and then regarded that as an accurate population estimate. FedCon itself reckoned on a refugee population of about one and half million; in fact they rapidly discovered a population of almost three million. It became necessary to rapidly increase the DRA staff who were actually on the ground by calling for volunteers from elsewhere within FedCon.

Enter Alexander Petrovic.

Working in Holland for Civil Infrastructure, Alex felt bored with paperwork; the clarion call for volunteers came as a godsend to him. Alongside thirty others working in Holland under the auspices of FedCon, he packed a few essentials and gone to Ijsselmeer airport. Not long out of his teens, ingenuous, idealistic, Alex was due to lose his fervour rapidly. Only thirty people turned up at Ijsselmeer to leave for their unknown destination; one person had learnt of the destination and suddenly decided not to go in violation of Contract.

The rest were told only after boarding a FLO Major Mover that they were to be assigned, en bloc, to the Refugee Support Scheme and would be based at Nuevo Laredo.

For a space of several seconds after the impersonal tannoy announcement nobody uttered a sound until everyone spoke at once. Their tone, collectively, sounded anxious: Mexico! And the most active part of the border, too, facing Texas. In fact they were due on one of the most active parts of the active zone.

That discovery lay in the future. In the meantime a briefing officer shouted over the hubbub, trying to get the message through, running up and down the aisles with sheets of paper.

'Hi,' Alex's seatmate had said. 'I'm Katrina. Are you scared, too?'

'Scared,' deadpanned Alex in reply. 'Ho ho.'

But he would be.

Recounting: Alex didn't describe everything he experienced, which would have been mightily dull in parts, not to mention long-winded. He sketched in the heat, dust, dirt, effort and enlarged on the less humdrum things. First he filled in the political scenery.

From the Mexican perspective: it was judged ill-advised to integrate immigrant refugees into the body politic - they might carry ideological or political contamination, there were too many of them, they could form pressure groups, and so on; still, deporting or barring entry would have been impractical - humanitarianism also had a bearing on this resolution, as did grants made available to the government to aid refugees; conflicting policies at government level forced incoming pogrom-fleers to settle in a squalid ghetto-land just south of the US-Mexican border, with more populous nodes based around centres such as Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Piedras Negras, Ciudad Juarez, Mexicali and of course Tijuana. The principal area of concentration was near Allende, and became known as "the Campo".

From the American perspective: a suitable recipient for the expelled millions suited the New America Party "just fine". World opinion would jib at victims being marched, for example, into the Atlantic Ocean (a comparatively mild suggestion compared to some from the more extremist NAP members). No, merely expelling them across the border to mingle with their cousins was _far_ better. Those with a liberal conscience wept blood at what happened. With such expulsions the continued instability of Mexico persisted, which again suited the New America Party "just fine". A feeble, internally-wracked neighbour presented far less of a threat than an assertive one, also presenting the NAP with the perfect excuse to maintain the State of Emergency and deny their countrymen any recourse to the Constitution. More, it appeared to show Americans what a mess Hispanics could make of their own country if allowed to run it. Of course, to instigate such chaos and maintain it meant covert American destabilisation activity - which Alex would return to.

From the refugee perspective: encamped in their slum cities, devoid of almost every requisite for a basic living, exploited by their host government politically - their existence within the USA must have been an ordeal indeed for them to consider such conditions an improvement. The Americanos, being people with aspirations, did not like the thought of remaining in their slums; they appreciated any attempt to help them. FedCon had been presented to them within the United States as an evil, corrupt, tentacular, tyrannical, planet-wide bureaucratic dictatorship, aiming for total control of humanity. Initially the DRA workers found themselves treated with hostility and suspicion, though over time they came to be revered.

From Alex's perspective: he had come to serve in a moral crusade, looking for an epiphany.

During their first night the thirty newcomers watched a display of vari-coloured lights, kilometres to the east of their camp; blue, red, green.

'Nice,' commented one. 'A firework display.'

'Fireworks nothing,' replied another. 'Those are tracer bullets.'

A few disturbed murmurs ran round the group at that little revelation. Next morning they discovered that the Americans subjected Camp Castro to bombardment all night long, for no especially good reason. Alex helped pick up the pieces for the rest of that day, shifting rubble, digging out bodies, driving a pocket bulldozer, giving blood. After working solidly for eight hours a small group of the volunteers sat on a stone wall, resting. All of them were dirty and dusty and most had blood smeared on them, from triage or first aid duties. A canteen of water passed backwards and forwards between them. Alex took a long swallow, sluicing away the grit lining his mouth.

'Why? Why?' he grated from behind clenched teeth. 'Thirty dead. Twice that many injured. A dozen children in the school bus alone, shot by machine-guns all night long. Christ Risen, may those Americans all go to Hell.'

Katrina, sitting alongside, nodded glumly and dumbly in agreement. They both removed the bodies from that bullet-sieved bus.

A baptism of fire. Alex rapidly developed a loathing for the Americans only a few kilometres away across the river, as days became weeks and ran into months and the random attacks continued. No rhyme or reason, merely random - or so he thought, until experience taught him otherwise. There was an hierarchy of military might across the Rio Bravo: the lowest rung of the ladder and most numerous were the Texas State Militia, an offshoot of the National Guard; next were the ten regular divisions of the US Army; last were the unseen Special Forces Commando units. The Texas State Militia were the worst by far, gun-toting and trigger-happy irregulars whose idea of fun on a Saturday night seemed to be machine-gunning 'Cano refugees. The word "Militia" happened to be a misnomer, to, conjuring up an image of part-time weekenders with obsolete rifles, instead of the full-timers with heavy machine guns, mortars, artillery, helicopters and light tanks that existed in reality. Regular US Army soldiers rarely engaged in action, unless tensions were very bad and the Mexican Army ranged itself against them. Engagements took place only three or four times per year. The Commandos were never seen. By deduction, they had strict instructions not to attack civilians, since they were never seen or heard. But they existed; almost every week they sneaked across the border and demolished bridges, monorail lines, marshalling yards, runways, airport towers, oil tanks, communication lines and junctions, vehicle parks, storage depots, anything that could be classed as strategic in target terms.

By such means they kept all of Northern Mexico destabilised. Then, too, there just so happened to be the time Alex got kidnapped. Out for an evening stroll on his own after a hard day of driving, digging and unloading supplies, he had seen what he thought in fright to be a moving log.

Fooled by twilight, he crept closer, finally recognising with a horrid intestinal lurch, a person. A person punctured - a silly word but the first one that came to mind - punctured. Blood dribbled from the painfully crawling figure, victim of a dreadful accident, surely, wounded in a dozen different places.

He stopped walking and rushed to help, but the figure continued to crawl, gasping, trying to physically escape from the pain that dogged it.

Christ, he thought, what do I do? They're dying -

Stabilise. Stop them moving, stop the bleeding, subdue the pain. Yes; one thing he always carried ( a legacy of two years hated conscription) was a Premaid kit, compact and comprehensive. His first-aid skills weren't too bad, being kept in practice here on the Campo.

Fumbling the kit open, he luckily found a syrette of Pseudo-Morph immediately, rapidly injected the sufferer in the neck, threw away the empty tube. Then came packets of arresting agent, a mixture that both sterilised and stimulated clotting action. He used every packet, tearing them open with his teeth. Lastly he used another syrette, an anti-shock agent. Using his knife he carefully cut away torn clothing and bound over the wounds with medical adhesive tape.

You poor swine, he thought. If this is the best I can do you won't last long. Have to call for help. Where's my TACT? Have to call camp, get a medical team here, so now where did I put it?

To better aid the victim he had unclipped the bulky TACT unit from his belt and left it nearby. Except that it no longer lay on the riverbank.

Panic! If he couldn't find it this man would die. As he turned -

A hard, unyielding metal thing came over his head, pulled down and back tight across his windpipe, effectively gagging him. Trying to reflexively move his arms he found that they were pinioned, too.

The Texas militiaman with his rifle firmly choking Alex, kneed his captive in the kidneys with a casual, brutal skill that spoke of long practice. The prisoner, rasping breath in and out through flaring nostrils, felt a sledgehammer blow that hurt and then went deeper and hurt even more. Tears of pain ran down his cheeks: he felt he was dying.

Dark shapes moved forward. There were three more of them, realised Alex. Three others, all carrying guns. With fixed bayonets. Remembering the wounded man, he grimaced in pain and fear.

'Ah, crying? We've got ourselves a real wuss this time. A real savage,' said one uniform.

'Yeah, a real wuss. Where's the spic?'

'Over here. You didn't do much good with that pig-sticker of yours, sucker's still alive.'

It wasn't easy for Alex to understand their drawling speech, which they kept low for fear of discovery, nor did the slowly receding pain in his back help to concentrate his attention. He did recognise their fatigue-cap badges; Lone Star Guards, Texas militia of the worst ilk. They kept necklaces of human ears for trophies.

'Pull him over. Over there. That's right.'

Two uniforms dragged the gasping, dying man in front of Alex. A mustachioed face abruptly interposed itself between Alex and the victim.

'So you spend yore time fixing up spics, do you? See how we fix 'em, you greasy Commie rag. Junior, do yore stuff, finish the job.'

The face disappeared. "Junior" appeared in front of them, grinning an entirely humourless rictus that would have been more at home on a cat than a man. Raising his rifle, Junior bayonetted the helpless man repeatedly and with vigorous relish. Un-necessarily, really, since the first thrust had been fatal.

Alex sagged, helpless with horror. Empty roaring sounds echoed around his head. Carelessly, his captor misjudged his captive's relaxation and slackened the punishing grip.

'You BASTARD!' screamed Alex, leaping free and kicking Junior in the crotch with all the strength he could muster with his DRA-issue reinforced steel-toecap boot.

The American collapsed in silent agony, clutching his pulverised crotch. His gun dropped on it's butt and began firing enthusiastically all by itself, bang bang bang.

Alex didn't see one of the others step up and silence the weapon because the man who had been doing the choking came up and battered the side of his face with something cold: hard metal.

Falling forward, he thought that the ground rose to meet him instead, until he actually hit the river bank and winded himself. The whole left side of his face felt numb and his vision was funny. No pain, not until a foot brushed his chin and he trembled with the dull, enormous pangs that shot through his jaw.

Broken, he thought, slowly. Broken jaw. Don't move it.

Unable to judge time, Alex couldn't even guess how far the four dragged him, expecting to die at any minute. Tears ran down his cheeks when his face hit a rock or another type of obstacle. Still the foursome didn't kill their prize. What he later thought of as the worst time in his life, easily, began as he was dumped in a canoe that the militiamen rapidly paddled across the Rio Bravo. More dragging, cursing, punching; Junior took an especial delight in tormenting their prisoner. His malicious glee was tempered by an inability to walk properly, so he contented himself by kicking Alex's kneecaps repeatedly and with considerable force.

Finally the group reached and stopped in an encampment, of the clandestine kind, it's scale only partly revealed b the sounds and smells prevalent.

They pushed him down a flight of stone steps, where he smashed his chin on stone at the bottom and passed out for a while.

Coming to, Alex found that his bladder had emptied, soaking his trousers. Next, he sat with his back to a wall, from which rusty but still hale chains snaked to secure his wrists and ankles. The place had to be small, judging by the dulled noises he made, since the militia didn't see fit to provide any type of illumination. It stank, too.

All during the slow night and into the false dawn his jaw ached, at first periodically, then permanently and it got worse. It hurt if he moved to breathe; it hurt if he hung his jaw open; it hurt even more if he shut his mouth. A perpetual nagging bruise reminded him of that punch - or kick - in the kidney, making it painful to lie or sit. The chains and manacles weighed heavy on his ankles and wrists, cutting and chafing. Sleep never came, only a pale shade of it that made dreams dance around the reeking cell.

A recurrent question flitted about his feverish thoughts. Why hadn't they killed him? Come to that, why bother to haul him across the Rio Bravo? Texas Militia never crossed over.

Those shots, perhaps, scared them into retreating. They should have just killed him on the spot. After all, they were certainly capable of it. Perhaps, in crossing the river, they had exceeded their orders. They could have been chasing that dying Americano, or maybe stumbled across him on the wrong side of the river. If they had killed him, well, maybe they had been after a prisoner. If they weren't supposed to cross the United States/Mexican border, then they ought to have a concrete result, a tangible asset to trade off against their transgression. Or they could have orders to bag a FedCon prisoner. For interrogation. That thought made him shudder, no theatrical affectation but a real shiver of fear, facing the thought that he would be tortured to death.

For all his waking nightmares, nobody came to see him. Dawn came. Daylight fell into the cell through a small, barred window set into the ceiling.

Escape? No, forget it. Injured, chained, imprisoned, doubtless guarded, within a major hostile encampment on the wrong side of the border. Miracles simply didn't that conveniently, despite the muttered prayer Alex sent up. With a sudden visceral surge, he realised that Alex Petrovic wasn't unique, that this experience must have been undergone by countless victims of the NAP already. Except that they weren't members of a supra-national aid entity, capable of interceding on behalf of its members should it choose to do so.

As day limped on, no-one came to torment, interrogate or feed him. The pain in his jaw became intermittently even more intense, making Alex faint for seconds or minutes. Pains in his knees and shins made themselves known - especially his knees, the targets of Junior's studded US Army surplus boots. Also, almost apologetically, his stomach announced itself, grumbling loudly to remind him that nothing edible had passed his lips since noon of yesterday. Thirst would tell first.

A fusillade of shots from outside made him jump in a painful panic, but nothing else happened. Gradually the cell heated up as day dragged slothfully on and the stinking straw gave off even more disgusting vapours.

After long-endured delay the cell door was unlocked and thrown open. Large figures in uniform unlocked the manacles and frog-marched the lone occupant outside, up the steps and southward, towards the river and a party of waiting canoes. A small group of people on a sandbank in midstream watched the progress of the prisoner and escort. The group included Camp Monitor Lafarge, who had been frantically busy talking to UNION and DRA about their missing member. She watched in angry silence as three soldiers escorted Petrovic into a small powerboat and sped across to the island. In mid-stream, both sides held it to be neutral territory.

Shit! Thought Lafarge in alarm, he looks a mess. What have those animals done to him!

'Petrovic? Can you walk?' she asked.

Alex looked a mess because he was one. His face, scratched all over, was disfigured by an immense purple bruise, he had two black eyes and his knees seemed to consist of equal parts straw, bloody denim and flayed skin. He could barely stand upright.

'Gmno,' he mumbled, not daring to shake his head.

The reason for his being there and alive at all was his reflexive kicking of Junior, an act that saved his life even if it secured him a good beating; the Americans, after all, intended to kill any witness to their trespass onto Mexican soil. The firing from Junior's gun had been heard and the bullets thus fired were discovered embedded in sand and logs; they were concrete evidence that Americans committed an act of trespass across the border onto Mexican soil. Lafarge called the American Army colonel in charge of the Lone Star Guard camp to inform him that if the abducted FedCon employee was returned intact, the bullets would also be returned to their owners.

The seriously embarrassed camp's commanding officer raged at the four transgressing militiamen, then had them arrested, imprisoned, beaten and Junior shot by firing squad in full view of Mexican, FedCon and 'Cano observers. He wanted to make sure that the rest of his wilful command didn't ever disregard his orders about total deniability of operations again.

Thus Alex returned to the land of the living, battered but alive.

Neil and Eric soaked up the story readily, almost dying to ask question after question but not quite daring enough to intervene. Alex left out a lot more than he told: the Purple Plague, Hells Highway, wild leave in Nuevo Laredo, long hard dirty slogging to rebuild devastated housing - all sorts.

'Did the locals like you?' asked Eric. 'I've heard that some of them didn't like you, thought you were like neo-colonists.'

Alex finished his recounting more cheerfully.

'Like us? They loved us! Don't confuse the Mexicans with their government and don't confuse the 'Canos - the Americanos, the refugees - with the Mexicans. The government didn't like us, oh no. But the people were different. You could walk into a cantina anywhere and people would thank you. They'd give us Catholic medallions, crucifixes, food, money on occasions and these were poor people. After my truck driving I got to be well know, or maybe because that was the way I drove. After that I couldn't pay for drinks or meals in the Campo, the Canos wouldn't let me. '

'How many of your lot were killed?' asked Neil in a touch of morbidness.

Pausing, Alex counted. Odd, that. At that time he knew it would never leave his mind. Now -

'Let me think. One canny man left before joining. Another got himself killed in a fight in Nuevo Laredo. Oh, and someone else ran off to Tijuana, never to be seen again. One died of the Purple Plague, another so badly debilitated that he returned to Holland. Two died when the helicopter was shot down. Six were injured and hospitalised for part of their tour. One got killed by a sniper from across the river. Ah - and seven were killed driving trucks up and down Hell's Highway, which is what we used to call Route Thirty Seven.'

A total of twenty casualties, eleven fatal. Fortunately for the volunteers who came afterwards, the lessons of the first Project volunteers were learned and it became unusual to lose more than one or two members on a tour.

Bloody hell! You devious dark horse, Petrovic! thought Neil. You went through all that and never told anyone at Benford about it, not even a hint.

'It can still tingle a bit if the weather is extra cold,' said Alex, in reference to his jaw. 'And the kneecaps are artificial. Had them replaced in Nuevo Laredo by DRA medical while they put my jaw back together. They need replacing every four or five years.'

Both his drinking partners shook their heads in wonder.


	11. Chapter 11

6) High Times

GERMANY

HAMBURG DOCK ZONE

Lather was having a nightmare, he knew and understood it, but still couldn't wake up or stop the dream from relentlessly happening even as it got worse and worse. Until only a few weeks ago when the Terrible Thing happened a nightmare would only take him to a certain point before reality impinged enough to wake him.

Not any more. This time he'd been dreaming of being on a deserted beach, at dusk, with only a wind from the sea making a noise. The waves seemed dark, even oily, the sand had a reddish cast to it and stretching before him endlessly was a trail of footprints in the sand. Compelled to follow the footprints, he trudged on, noticing how the dunes to his left gradually rose above him and became a sheer cliff. While he walked on the sea washed up the beach behind him, cutting off any retreat. Then he began to notice the footprints weren't quite … proper, there were six toes to each impression. Nor was that all - the longer he followed the trail, the more grotesque the prints became, twisted, malefic. Ahead in the distance the cliffs curved around to meet the shoreline in a dead blank rock wall that met the sea. Behind, lapping three metres deep, the sea barred any withdrawal. And ahead, just vaguely visible, a dark shape in the distance, the creator of those "footprints", squatting beneath the cliff, becoming clearer in detail as he drew nearer.

Not surprisingly, Lothar woke with a shriek when his squat-mate, Peiter, shook his shoulder.

'I've told you,' snapped Lothar peevishly at breakfast. 'I haven't dropped any acid or Hype. Nothing hallucinogenic, okay? I haven't taken any so I don't have any so stop pissing me off.'

"Breakfast": an expansive term for half a carton of almost stale soya milk, a black market duck egg acquired in a trade, a few stale slices of wurst already spotted with mould. Their portable heater/cooker unit lay in one corner of the dully-echoing attic space, abandoned since they didn't possess anything to cook on it and it was out of fuel tablets anyway. No matter, the weather was warm, the attic well-insulated - perhaps they could trade it, mused Lothar.

'Okay, okay.' Peiter sulked for a minute. He really liked the strong psychedelic agents but the supply had dried up of late. A crackdown, some dealers said. A bottleneck, others said. Quality control, said others. A drug war, said the police, who knew the truth.

''D'you want some hash?' asked Lothar, offering a tiny metal pipe. Peiter shook a reluctant head. Smoking cannabis or any of its derivatives made him ravenous but once again - nothing to eat.

Lothar carried on. As the fumes rattled round hid lungs he cast a bleary eye over their current abode, idly reflecting on how they'd gotten in.

The two were living within the false ceiling of a huge derelict warehouse at the very eastern end of Hamburg's dock zone. Originally it had been a bonded warehouse, holding liquor, tobacco, electronics, software. A false ceiling was installed to hold air-conditioning, lighting and alarm systems: it had been constructed strongly to support such equipment, more than adequate to hold the weight of two people. When the Port Authority opened up new macro-cellular modular warehouses the older ones had been stripped of their fittings and left to decay. Apparently it was uneconomical to demolish them immediately and through oversights one or two - such as the one Lothar and Pieter occupied - remained standing.

Initially they'd only come in, out of a nasty positive pH rain after sneaking in through rents in surrounding fences. Discovering a vertical rust-encrusted ladder, Pieter borrowed their flashlight and climbed seventy metres to discover their best hiding place so far. Later they removed the ladder and made a rope one of their own. Even if both were out of the attic they could still get back up, since Pieter stole a remote-control spindle and beamer unit. All you needed to do was point in the approximate direction, press the button and hey presto, down came a rope ladder. To hide it after use, simply press reverse. If ever the technology they could resurrect the old iron ladder.

Melodramatic and over-elaborate? No, not really. They had used it twice so far to hide when in fear for their skins. First occasion, they were about two minutes ahead of a gang of enraged Hell's Angels. The Angels thought that they were getting twenty per cent pure heroin, seven grams worth. What they got was an eighth gram sample plus six-and-seven-eights of uncoloured cosmetics base. Neither Lothar nor Pieter expected their violent victims to inject to soon after purchase and suffer the puking horrors. They were glad of the loft then - the Angels had come hunting with swords and shotguns … On the second occasion; when the Polizei made a huge sweep through the whole dock district for low-life of all sorts, especially druggies. They'd hid after frantically running, not daring to emerge for three days.

'Hey, Pieter, what say we trade the heater? We could get a fair bit for it..'

'What? Talk sense! D'you think they'll trade dope for that down on the circuit? Don't be an arse.'

Lothar swore back.

'You stupid Dutch tosser! I meant we take it down to Apple Street, flog it there. There's loads of traders that end - second-hand, third-hand, pawn shops, barter stalls. Take the money, right? And go back to the Circuit. Stop on the way and get some food, salad stuff.'

Pieter hummed to himself for a few minutes, thinking. That hater was their Number One item, German Wehrmacht surplus, compact, powerful and efficient, worth about seven hundred although they'd be lucky to get three, four if the gods were with them. On the other hand, the loft insulation was excellent, so they didn't actually need a heater. Cooked food? Limited to toast and eggs, actually -

'Okay! Let's do it!'

They had stolen the heater anyway so it wouldn't be that much of a wrench to part with it.

Yuri's: a garish neon sign above a heavy riveted door, paintless after a decade of use and abuse. Under Hamburg's licensing regulations, Yuri's was a club, open only during the hours of darkness, less strictly monitored than an inn, bar or hostel. Being on the Circuit, the clientele were whores, dealers, users, pimps, runners and general drifters. People who were serious about obtaining illegal services gravitated towards places such as Yuri's; only fools and tourists bothered to deal with the people who stood on street corners.

Lothar and Pieter both met at Yuri's. Pieter being there after fleeing from Holland and a badly bungled robbery, Lothar running from the aftermath of the Terrible Thing. Both liked the relaxed atmosphere where tension rarely surfaced.

Now clutching various groceries, they moved through layers of smoke to the secluded seats farthest from the bar. Dealer territory.

'Hi!' said a weaselly little Moroccan known as Ben, whom they knew. 'Hey, do I have a deal for you. Sit, sit.'

They sat with Ben and made some purchases; marijuana resin, Hype and a few metamphetamines. By convention they remained to smoke one with their dealer.

'Are you available for, ah, work, lads?' asked Ben in his appalling German.

'Work? That depends, really. What kind, how's the pay, and so on,' replied Lothar.

Ben tapped his nose.

'Follow me.'

He led the two wary men to what had been a storeroom. Pieter nervously fingered a double-edged knife hidden up one shirt sleeve; Lothar shrugged fretfully, ready to act in a hurry if need be.

There was only one item of furniture in the room, a cheap plastic table. Behind it stood three men - no, make that a woman and two very large men. Shit! thought Lothar, bad news. What if they get nasty! How do we cope with them when carrying ten tonnes of groceries in our arms?

Happily, there was no need to cope.

"Mrs Schmidt" introduced herself, then explained, after dismissing Ben, that she would like to offer them employment. Pieter by reputation had a way with gadgets, Lothar was large and strong and most relevant of all, the duo had a secure bolthole in the docks zone. Location unknown but definitely a secure rathole.

What the lady wanted were pictures and diagrams of a special secure warehouse deep in the dock zone - hence the offer made to the two dock rats. They would be given a Velos camera and five thousand in advance, an additional twenty thousand upon successful completion. The greed circuit present in the human mind promptly switched on in both Lothar and Pieter. They accepted. No questions about the warehouse were answered, but they worked it out between themselves on the way home; it must contain impounded drugs, taken from the streets, from black market sources, from grey market medical houses. They knew Mrs Schmidt fronted for some vague personality in the background, but the five thousand marks and the Velos camera were reassuringly concrete.

Thus: a night later after a thorough reconnaissance they had gotten past an inner security fence, across an inert electronic moat, through a positive maze of hive-like modular warehouses. Pieter drew a map during daylight to ensure they reached Storage Facility #122. Now, from a hundred metres away they carefully lay low, taking a few pictures then moving, taking a few pictures then moving, trying to cover all sides of the warehouse. Surprisingly enough there was still activity at this late hour, vast hoverbed trucks loading and unloading, attended by flocks of uniformed staff.

Maybe it wasn't drugs after all, concluded Lothar. They noted at least six different alarm systems in or around 122 and some of those - uniformed? - staff carried guns.

'ARE YOU TWO HAVING FUN?' boomed a hollow voice above them. They had missed the seventh alarm system, a powered miniature glider carrying an electronic snout and operated by a keen-eyed Customs Control officer, who switched on the glider's spotlight and played it over the horrified duo.

'REMAIN STATIONARY. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.'

Lothar froze, thinking a single thought repeatedly. Pieter leapt up and fled as hordes of uniforms from the warehouse raced towards them.

'STAND STILL,' echoed the giant voice from above.

Pieter kept right on, straight into the now activated electronic moat, which promptly gave him an electric shock powerful enough to throw him to the ground, stunned. Lothar stayed perfectly still, until he noticed the red epaulettes on the shoulders of the Customs Control officers pointing guns at him.

Oh shit, he thought, scared enough to start shaking. The Fed.

7) Power Cut

JULY 1

ASHTABULA

OHIO

"Responsibility".

That had to be the word, responsibility. Cleavon knew how to _say_ it and he knew what it meant but dammit if he knew how to spell the wretched word. After all, there seemed to be lots of vowels in it. He could guess at the spelling, of course. He managed "R-E-S-P-O-N" before deciding against it. If this application form got spoilt they might not accept it. Cow crap! Why couldn't he have done better at school! And despite all the high-tec surveillance gear arrayed around him nothing would tell him how to spell.

A quick check of the compound screen showed nothing unusual. Good; he might get this application finished tonight. If he didn't, Marie would chew him out and go sleep in the guest room again.

'Cleavon, you there?' asked a speaker unit. That would be Pollock, the new supervisor, checking up.

'Yes. What's up?'

'Oh, nothing special. There's a new Guy patrolling your section of the fence tonight, just watch he doesn't trip any alarms, okay?'

After a wait of several minutes, sure enough, the Guy patrolling the perimeter hove into view. Big and muscly and smooth in motion, carrying a heavy machine gun.

No use asking a Guy about spelling. It (actually a "he" but sterile and usually seen as genderless) had the IQ of a small child. Dedicated, loyal, tireless and _stupid_ because Uncle Sam didn't want intelligent Genetic Utility Infantry to pose a threat to Homo Sapiens. The Guy plodded out of sight behind the entrance sign that read "Welcome to Ashtabula! Atom City USA!". Cleavon nodded to himself in affirmation that no matter how dumb he might be, the Guy made him look smart. He carried on with his form, carefully. Should he get caught "shirking" he would be summarily dismissed. Although there were no monitor screens in the post there might be vision sensors hidden in order to spy on him, nor could you ever be sure that there wasn't an observer watching you at some time.

Cleavon worked as one of the shift security guards (for which read "night watchmen") monitoring the immense perimeter fence that guarded "Atom City", festooned with black lights, radar traps, seismic sensors, detection apparatus of every kind. The fence itself was electrified and topped with mono-molecular wire. Moats ten metres wide and three metres deep lay both in front of and behind the fence, spanned only at the guard post by a narrow bridge. Patrols swept the barren land and made a point of killing any wildlife encountered, ensuring that "critters" did not cause false alarms by encroaching on the fence zone. Wildlife, though, did not thrive in this environment.

And why ..? Because of nuclear energy. Fusion power was all very well but fissile materials derived from the fission process were essential to the American nuclear weapons program. Uranium, plutonium, thorium, all came from the clandestine shadow plants at Ashtabula. Nuclear energy produced there powered the domestic and industrial areas of the North-Eastern USA in a convenient military-industrial symbiosis. On the debit side a combination of pollution, waste and accidents had made an area of concern to conservationists both moderate and radical: hence the security. Fiscal competition, plus a little energy blackmail, led to occasional forays against Atom City by Pennsylvanian Energy Authority Agents: hence the security. Internally the heads of Atom City worried about their continuing commission from the Department of Energy, Fissile Fuels Division and the Department of Defence, Fissile Procurement Division: hence the security. Also, the spectre of nuclear war persisted in the human psyche; Pennsylvania wished to retain and remain the -sylvan part of it's name; the conversion of Transylvania to "Transplutonia" in the Last War was remembered: hence the security.

The security was intended to prevent intruders from entering and thieves from leaving. It worked. There had been no incident for over seven months now and the last one involved a rather pathetic attempt to break in by three West Virginians from an extremist environmental group (all three now safely dead). Cleavon thought it reasonable, therefore, for his taking time out to fill out his application to the New America Party in the small hours of the morning, unworried by the possibility of disturbance (he left a small blank space to fill in later when he got the chance to check that spelling).

Reasonable, but wrong.

A screen started to flash; a speaker buzzed; a string of codewords raced across a monitor.

'Attention please, attention please, we are now being subjected to an attack,' droned the artificial voice of the sentry speaker.

Cleavon sat up in abrupt surprise, listening to the incongruously calm computer-generated voice.

'An attack! From where!'

'An assault by persons unknown conveyed in three air-cushion vehicles. They are headed towards this section of fencing. Attention please, attention please, we are now being subjected to an attack. Att-'

He shut out the annoying voice. Another one came through, Pollock shouting questions at him. Cleavon ignored the supervisor, rotating cameras and running through the detection spectrum.

There …

Distant but rapidly drawing closer, three vehicles, yes. Three hovertanks skimming along in follow-the-leader formation. They seemed ready for action, lights extinguished and hatched locked down, turrets tracking slowly from right to left. When they got nearer to the fence zone passive defence measures started up; huge red warning holograms materialised: STOP; DANGER; AVERT; LETHAL FORCE WILL BE USED; NO MORE WARNINGS.

'Cleavon! Who the hell are they! Jesus Mary Joseph, Central, are you getting any of this?'

On came the tanks, remorseless and faceless, neither slowing nor speeding, making no radio contact with the signalling sentries, closing fast on the fence and leaving a rolling wake of dust behind them.

Tank number one cut power just short of the outer moat. Carried on by momentum, it sailed into space and dripped into the moat at almost a hundred kilometres per hour, wrecking itself with a noise Cleavon could hear and a tremor that he felt deep in his bones. The next two tanks raced over the improvised bridge of their fallen comrade, number three slowing down considerably. Number two ran straight into the fencing with a huge blue flash as the whole section shorted out. Leaving a great ragged rent and carrying sheets of wire netting, the hovertank crashed into the inner moat and stopped dead. Tank number three shot through the newly created hole and over the smoking wreck of the second tank, headed for Lake Erie and the PowerPlex with nothing to stop it. Cleavon rotated cameras to track the rapidly disappearing vehicle, shaking his head in awe and fear. He wanted the tank to stop, turn around, vanish, do anything except carry on. The tank merely dwindled into the distance and darkness beyond the camera's ability to resolve.

Pollock's voice still rang, panic-stricken, from the speakers, issuing instructions, another supervisor shouted from another speaker and alarms shrieked all along the fence.

Then, unexpectedly, a series of explosions came from the direction that the assaulting tank had arrowed away to, then another violent firecracker, then another.

Cleavon slumped in his seat with a deep, dark pit opening up in his stomach, looking at the screens but no longer seeing them. Cow crap. With what just happened he'd be lucky to live to see tomorrow, he couldn't have seen it but that, of course, in the current State of Emergency, made no difference. Just in case, he'd torn up the application form and burnt it, ground up the ashes and mixed them up with the waste in his refuse bin. Inspiration struck him and he powered down the monitors in the booth, left and locked the door. A quick sprint brought him to the wrecked tank lying in the outer moat. The turret, torn from its mounting by the force of the crash, lay at an odd angle with smoke seeping out from the narrow gaps between the hull and turret base.

This, thought Cleavon, will convince them that I was on the ball, not jerking off in the booth. He unholstered his side-arm and shot off a whole clip at the wreck (the first and only time he ever used the gun). Small bright splotches showed on the hull of the tank where the bullets ricocheted off and removed paint as they did so.

Cleavon returned to his booth seconds before a fireball rose in the dark behind him. At first he ducked, thinking that one of the wrecks in the moat had blown up, but when he looked backwards he saw a twisting tongue of fire rising many kilometres away. He sat in his chair and stared at the floor in stunned disbelief. Those attacking hovertanks had been embellished with the insignia of the Ashtabula Security Force, leased from the Fourth Armoured Division. Why would they carry out a suicidal assault like this?

8) Blackmail (and Strong Drink)

LONDON

JULY 10th

Alex drove from the motel back to work. Each night he'd slept over in a different hotel, paying cash instead of using a card, signing an illegible signature, avoiding people. Avoiding his flat, too, avoiding thinking about his predicament. It was a temporary measure and he knew it. As he slowed down for a red light an unregistered black saloon blocked him in front. Looking behind, he saw another unregistered black saloon blocking the rear; two people had left it and were casually walking towards him and when he looked to the front there were two people there as well. One pair went to the offside door, one pair to the nearside. Although they obviously represented authority, they politely knocked at the window.

He sighed and opened the door, prepared for the worst. In a strange way the politeness of these English felt far more unsettling than the treatment meted out to suspects back in Serbia - rough and uncompromising to the point of brutality.

'Mister Petrovic? Yes? Please leave your car, sir,' asked a nondescript person. There seemed to be a bulge under each armpit.

'Who are you?' asked Alex out of morbid curiosity, not really expecting an answer.

'Police, sir,' and all four produced coded hologram chips at the same instant in an incongruously comic manner. Alex peered. NEW NEW SCOTLAND YARD glimmered back at him, set deep in an intricate jewelled nest of ideograms. They were the real thing all over, this foursome; two metres tall, bland looks (surgery, perhaps?), sharp foxy eyes, deferential manners sugar-coating an undoubtedly hostile cast. One of them took his elbow in a grip just short of painful, urging him forward to a black saloon. Another policeman got into Alex's car.

'Am I under arrest?'

'Please get in the car, sir.'

'No, you are not under arrest, Mister Petrovic. We are acting on behalf of the Concordat.'

'Oh. And what does the Concordat want with me?'

'You are to be delivered to South London Sorting Office.'

Nothing else was said for the rest of the trip. Alex felt his heart alternately flit like a bird and thump like a hammer. He didn't feel comfortable about that title, "South London Sorting Office", and wondered just what it was.

It was a large modular warehouse, an accretion of geodesics only identified by a small and discreet plaque. Around about were other similar buildings, some empty, others being emptied or stocked. A lone figure waved cheerfully to them from an access hatch set in a truck-sized doorway in the Sorting Office wall, then came trotting over the concrete apron to meet them. Alex was forced out of the saloon, which then drove off at speed. None of the police even glanced back.

'Miserable long-faced lot, aren't they?' said the receptionist, and said it in Serbian. 'I'm Slobodan, by the way. Any questions? Well, of course you have. Come along and I'll answer them.' He looked good-natured, sharp-eyed and intelligent, almost like a fox rendered human.

Alex considered running away but the almost subconscious voice of caution warned him not to. Just as well, for Slobodan had instructions to get his client to the warehouse by any means possible; "alive" being the only constraint. This insistence was because the warehouse happened to be FedCon territory and they had full jurisprudence over any employee within it's bounds. Slobodan found that a friendly, curiosity-arousing approach worked best, especially if the escorts who delivered clients were a singularly humourless as those of New New Scotland Yard. He was, however, quite prepared to use threats of weapons or both if he had to.

'Where's my car! And what about work -'

'Don't fret so. The police have driven your car back to Badfort. They called your supervisor to say that you were called up to do jury service.'

Alex entered through the service hatch. Two very large people stepped in behind him: uniform-clad FAA police, implicitly forcing their escortee forward. One male, one female, both looking professionally unpleasant.

South London Sorting Office consisted of stacked offices constructed from modular sections. The small party entered one office which in fact led to a basement level. Alex led the way along a series of anonymous corridors until a sharp thrust from behind threw him headlong into a cramped cell. The door swung shut behind him and no lights followed. He panicked momentarily, then realised why: rotting straw. They made the place smell of rotting straw, just like that evil little oubliette in America. Before taking a step forward he waved both hands in front of him.

Nothing there. No trips or traps. However, since they had used smell, they ought to hit him with another type of sense assault.

They did. Sounds, pitched just below two hundred decibels, a mixture of hideous two kilohertz wailing and massively amplified gunshots. Then, just as he started to recover from that, they used -

Lights, actinic kliegs flashing stroboscopically at nearly seven times per second, bright enough to penetrate beneath the eyelids. Alex curled up and cowered, terrified of suffering an epileptic fit under these stimuli.

The sensory barrage continued for an almost unendurable, nerve-shredding time. Then - nothing.

Hidden in the cell was a speaker.

'Hello there!' came Slobodan' s voice. 'This, Alex, is an Eagle Two.'

Eagle Two. Shit, thought Alex, miserable and dejected, also disoriented. I'm being interrogated. Eagle Two meant they had already performed an Eagle Three - namely, covert observation of a subject, monitoring their activity, friends, relatives, background, finances. Eagle Two came next in the progression, the direct, confrontational interrogation of a suspect. These cell walls probably bulged with monitoring electronics.

'Please respond to the questions we ask you, Alex. This is your opportunity to clarify your position.' Translation: answer or suffer.

'Full name.'

'Alexander Dragan Petrovic.'

'Place of birth.'

'Sjenika, Serbia, Yugoslav Federal Republic.'

'Personnel number.'

'Can't remember.'

'Don't lie, Alex! Personnel number.'

'Ah - no, still can't remember.'

'Ho ho, most amusing. Why didn't you declare your earnings?'

'Earnings? Oh, earnings. Because I'd worked bloody hard for them, doing all the research and I wrote them before joining the Fed. You don't just throw away two years hard work for nothing.'

'Your address please.'

On and on and on went the session, for hours and hours. Gradually Alex calmed down, the raw fear that manifested itself earlier becoming an irritation at the bland questioning.

Just as surmised, each wall (also floor and ceiling) of his confinement room were full of eavesdropping equipment, subtle electronic sages constantly monitoring up to twenty-eight different parameters: galvanic skin response, pupil dilation, respiration rate, heart rate, vasodilation, horripilation and a host of other measures beyond the ability of all but a yogi to control. From a central processor the raw data passed to SLSO's resident psychologist, who came up with a rapid interpretation of the information, since a certain Mister Weiss of UNION was waiting for a definitive answer. At that moment one of UNION's agents watched the psychologist working, ready to take a reply and personal observation back to his superior.

'That's it, Mister Gelb. First run analysis complete. Want to hear it?'

'Condense it.'

'Ah. Okay. Our subject seems to possess a colossal guilt problem. Principally his guilt stems from the money he has, which appears rather meaningless to him. Not just the money but the things it also provides - nice car, holidays abroad, costly flat. This seems to derive from his experiences in Mexico. You will have noticed that he allocated, by covenant, had the money back to his family in Serbia. Now, if you want a punchline, what our subject is seeking, or has been seeking, in life is an epiphany. What he is looking for, though he may not have verbalised it quiet so, is some type of purging experience that would remove his guilt and make him believe that he was doing something of genuine worth. He looks back on his time in Mexico with mixed feelings, you see; it felt terrifying at the time but also vital. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he has a request in for transfer to DRA, to go to the Maghreb or back to Mexico.'

'Would he take our offer seriously?'

The psychologist laughed.

'He doesn't have much choice, does he? Sorry. Seriously - ah, well, it would jar his sensibilities to begin with. Make it an unpleasant initiation, though, and I guarantee he will pass it, to simultaneously defy you and redeem himself. There might be a problem, though.'

Gelb turned and looked enquiringly at his partner.

'As I said, Mexico made a profound impression on him. He saw death at close proximity and with regularity. From his admissions and from what I deduce he made a private agreement with himself never to kill anyone.'

Oh really, thought Gelb. The Eagle Three team didn't get quite that impression when they met Petrovic for the first time. He was going for a weapon in the kitchen, probably one of those fancy German mono-blade knives. Whatever, Weiss had instructed that Petrovic be inducted; if found passable he could be used, if not they could throw him to the wolves in some appropriate manner. And, contrary to public opinion, UNION did not exist solely to kill people.

'Ah. It is, perhaps, time to send in the shadow,' said the psychologist.

(SHADOW: "A dark image, an area of relative darkness, a threatening influence, a spectre, an inseparable companion, a person who trails another in secret, such as a detective")

Eventually Alex lost his temper at the questions and simply shouted curses in response to each new query. After being grumpy and angry then irritable and bored, Alex returned to the door of his cell.

Unlocked! They must be playing games with him. He carefully stepped out and breathed stale but clean air circulating around the nondescript corridors.

After appearing out of nowhere, the FAA police marched Alex though more corridors, seemingly at random until (surprise!) both escorts moved away at the entrance to yet another room. This one seemed relatively appealing, far more so than the last one, since it featured two reclining chairs, a small table, a person - male, late twenty-ish, wearing a wry smile and an earlink monitor. Upon the table sat a bottle and two glasses.

'Take a seat. I'm Milos, by the way. So we meet at long last, hey?'

Alex sat. Milos sat. Together they sat, in silence. Milos, however, was being supplied with information via the earlink about his assignee. He received a prompt.

'Do you want some slivovitz? Good stuff. One two zero per cent proof.'

Suspicion bloomed within Alex, the old ugly flower that impelled him to caution and care.

'What is it with UNION? Are you all Serbs? Oh - I get it. This is the pleasant side of my interrogation, isn't it. Pretty stupid of me not to realise.' He didn't drink anything.

Milos got a glass and absently clinked it against the bottle of spirits. Then he got another feed from the eavesdropping psychologist.

- be honest with him, tell him about Shadowing -

'I'll be honest with you. I'm a Shadow.'

For a shadow he looked curiously solid and three-dimensional.

'It's my job to study in detail any person who's under investigation, reading about them, studying them, trailing them. So I know all about you, though you don't know me at all. This meeting may change that.'

Alex remained silent and sullen.

'Now, you're bound to wonder what we're up to.'

- explain to him about shadows, explain that to him -

'As a shadow I can explain anything you want to know about my employers and your future employers.'

Alex reached for a glass at those words. A phrase of Neil's came back from their conversation back at his flat came back unbidden as his stomach clenched and his throat dried up: "You could offer to work for them."

'Future employers! Do you know something I don't?'

Milos smiled a knowing smile. No, make that an annoying, knowing smile.

'I promise to tell you the truth. UNION want you as an employee.'

Which happened to be what Alex didn't want to hear but expected anyway. Half expected. Internally he took stock: they might blackmail him into working for them but he'd never become one of them and he'd certainly not break his rule against taking life. The eavesdroppers and interpreters had doubtless learned that during the interrogation and could make of it whatever they wanted. Why would UNION want an unco-operative, unwilling Serb working for them? he asked himself, then answered his own question: all those contacts in Greece, people he knew, addresses, personal profiles, political sympathies, weaknesses, general assessment work he could carry out.

'I'd be useless.'

'Oh, I'm afraid not, Alex. You are actually a prime candidate for recruitment.'

'What! Oh, come on! Christ Risen, this gets worse. What do you mean?'

- stop smiling, he doesn't like it. Talk in a commiserative way, as if you're sorry for him -

'A prime candidate. Alex, what do you think UNION's most pressing problem is?'

'Not enough people to shoot?'

- ignore that and carry on -

'Actually it's their staff.'

Alex looked blank.

''They simply can't get enough staff of the right calibre. Those they get they can't retain. It's a perennial problem. Another?' he asked, referring to the bottle.

'Yes. Cheers.'

'So, a person such as yourself makes a good catch. To use the example of carrot and stick, they have a large blackmail stick to beat you over the head with just in case you're reluctant -'

- don't overdo it! -

'- with the carrot of being able to do what you really want to do, helping people directly instead of pushing a pen and shuffling papers. You already have experience of covert work in Greece, with a long list of contacts built up over the years.'

'Well, yes, but - I mean, the relatives are pretty distant ones. As for the local Greeks, they always kept a certain distance. Through fear, I think.' That was a lie, the Greeks he knew were friendly and outgoing and not suspicious in the least, and he didn't want to betray them just like that.

'Regardless, Mister Weiss would dearly like to get hold of that information. That's not all either. You're already a member of FedCon with eight years experience; you've worked in Mexico, Britain and Holland. Your personal assessment says you are, quote: Intelligent and able, well-motivated." So you see, you are quite a good catch.'

Alex glowered and made two little lines above his nose, wrinkling it as he sneered derisively, surprised as he was at such a positive assessment.

- alright, now the conscience salve -

There fell a pause before the conversation began again.

'When they induct you, Alex, they'll put you through something known as the Meatgrinder.'

- good, now you can lay it on -

'To be honest, Alex, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It's a ball-breaker, really.' And Milos wasn't exaggerating because he had been through the Meatgrinder himself and spoke with feeling and experience.

"Meatgrinder?" wondered Alex, what on earth is that? It doesn't sound like a party invitation.

'They put you through a six month course in six weeks, to see if you can stand the pressure. There are tests, practicals, assessments, all highly intensive. Creates very high levels of stress and it's really unpleasant. I know, I've done it.'

Milos tutted sympathetically and they both had another drink.

Bastards, thought Alex. They've left me with no alternative, have they. Go to White Hell in McMurdo Sound or pull years of screamtime down the Trench or - get minced.

'What would happen if I accepted ik. Ik? Sorry, accepted _it._ My tongue's not working properly.'

- this is it! We have got him just where we want him, in a corner. Right, tone down the consequences a little -

Milos slyly played on Alex's guilt and acquisitiveness, explaining that what he had at present he could keep but future royalties would be diverted to Finance with him only getting a percentage of his percentage. No more superlative income to cloud the conscience or the bank account. Although as a UNION probationer he would in fact earn almost twice his current salary …

(Not strictly true, as Alex later found out. He would need to work for two years with a flawless probationary year and a one hundred per cent second year credit to boost his salary by a hundred per cent. Nobody to date had managed such a feat and Alex didn't' break the duck either.)

Next day.

Alex woke up. Then he decided that waking up happened to be a bad idea. Waking up meant feeling dire. Clearly Sobr-Ups had a low level of efficiency when deployed against half bottles of imported slivovitz. Not only that but the resultant chemical cocktail made him feel ill.

In flashes the previous day's travail came back to him: detention, interrogation, drinking. But not working.

Christ Risen! Ten past twelve noon - no, no that must be wrong.

No.

Ten past twelve. Ten minutes beyond the last clocking-in time at work and even if he drove full speed (assuming nil time to depil, dress, wash, eat, depart) in a traffic-free metropolis he would still be at least thirty minutes late. Christ Risen, what could go wrong next! Arrested, detained, now late for work. All this flashed in another sequence in Alex's mind, in mental fifth gear. He hurled the duvet back and dropped both legs to the floor.

Piezo-electric crystals cleverly connected and the wall-screen television came on, too loud.

'Good morning Alex!' boomed the speakers.

Alex, rubbing his hair and stretching, paused in surprise. It couldn't be a personalised broadcast, they were illegal and no station dared broadcast them, hadn't done for years - or was that only in Europe?

'Hello hello! You must be wondering about work, well no real need to. You're on indefinite leave. All has been taken care of.'

Oh well, the late start was resolved anyway.

Obviously persons unknown had thoughtfully made up a video disk with the visual code deleted and inserted it in the player, all ready for Mister Petrovic and his surfacing in the morning. They pulled official strings to arrange for indefinite leave, returned him to his room whilst still inebriated (not a condition he normally suffered from so there may have been more than vodka in that bottle of Milos'). He dressed, walked sombrely to the main room and found various miscellania deposited on the coffee table. A new copy of the Manual of Personnel Operations (boring centimetre-thick tome), a newly-typed sheet of print that appeared to be a contract, a small imitation-leather cachet. Alex picked up the last-named first.

That disk still rattled on in the background.

' - you will have to make your own arrangements for travel to Amberland. Arrival time is between nineteen to twenty-two hundred on the eighteenth of this month. If you are so much as a minute late you will not get it. The entry code will be after the beep and PAY ATTENTION! Because this whole vid is a self-eraser one-play'

"beep" went the disk, then "one three five seven six one". Alex bit his cheek and frantically looked for an EMO or Greenscreen, found one and whilst reciting the numbers to himself typed them in.

What lay in the cachet? He held it along each edge and pressed, making the little pouch gape into a mouth; tilting and shaking made a small piece of plastic fall out. It was electric green and of a size to fit into the palm; it came wrapped in a heat- and pressure-proof plastic shield with Day-Glo instructions attached.

1) OPEN IN PRIVATE

2) FOR FUTURE POSITIVE VERIFICATION:

A) PLACE TWO DIGITS UPON MEMORY STRIP AND RETAIN THERE FOR TWO SECONDS.

B) DO NOT DIVULGE DETAILS OF DIGITS USED.

3) ENTER VIA PERSONAL TACT SECONDARY CODE APPENDED.

4) DESTROY SECONDARY CODE

5) DESTROY THESE INSTRUCTIONS

IMPORTANT! THIS CARD IS THE PROPERTY OF FEDCON. IT CAN BE RECALLED AT ANY TIME. KEEP IT SAFE. YOU WILL BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR IT'S LOSS

Alex stuck the various laminae in a pocket and went about eating some crispbread, periodically dipping it in mock-yoghurt and trying not to drop crumbs. He took a long slow look around him, making an assay of the room. The draft that included himself would be accommodated at Amberland for their training, so he wouldn't have the benefit of all his paraphernalia. No more messages to El Quatro. UNION had already removed his optical laser, anyway. He felt half-excited, half-scared and half-angry, one hundred and fifty per cent alive. It was strange, strange, strange; about to surrender his freedom and future financial security yet he truly felt more euphoric than he had for years. Off to do battle with the System Runners, Authority, Wire Puller (it helped, really, to personalise the struggle as against people instead of a training program). Possibly removing the guilty secret that he'd ferried around inside for years helped his conscience, too.

Looking round the room, seeing it through eyes opened by honesty, he saw it as it really was, a softer type of prison; one where you locked yourself in, against the outside world. All communications sanctioned and censored, no contact with other people - he'd be better off in an antique hole like the one Neil lurked in.


	12. Chapter 12

9) Ground Meat

AMBERLANDS

HEREFORDSHIRE

Six weeks condensed into snapshots, all that Alex really wanted to remember about the Meatgrinder course, which felt every bit as unpleasant as Milos' hinted at:

EXAM PAPER ONE:

Question one (Compulsory) Out line the sequence of events from 1997 to 2009 (inclusive) that led to the destruction of the previous political order in the USA; include a description of how these events were to affect general European and later world history.

'I will not handle a gun.'

'You bloody well will, little man.'

'I won't. I'm not in the Army and you can't make me.'

'You don't have a choice here.'

'I won't handle a gun.'

'You don't pass the Handgun course then you fail overall, little man.'

'I won't shoot people.'

'I'm not bloody asking you to! It's just a target in there. Now pick up the gun.'

EXAM PAPER TWO

Question two (Compulsory) Given a Lascelle constant of 0.53, use the table of indices to determine the degree of cultural compatibility between the following: I) a minor Muslim oil state and a major Muslim military state; ii) the United States and Armenia; iii) Norway and Taiwan; iv) A Northern hemisphere island state and a Southern hemisphere island state.

"In the Field Training Exercise you will be flown, blindfold, to a drop-off point at least fifty kilometres away. Your mission is then to make your way back here, within twelve hours. The police have been told about you and will therefore be trying to apprehend you. Capture means failure. Turning up after twelve hours means failure. That's all. I'd like to wish you good luck but can't because we need to fail some of you. Quotas and all that. Off you go now.'

EXAM PAPER THREE

Question 1) (Compulsory) Develop and prove, after Cattell, a dynamic model of politico-historical covalent evolution, with regard to the Indian sub-continent. You MUST include and explain: I) Moghul domination ii) European penetration iii) English domination iv) Partition v0 Religious division (contemporary) vi) Economic division (historical).

"You will find various objects in front of you. Some are of potential use, others are not. Make your selection. You will have forty-five seconds to open the lock in front of you when I stop talking. Go!"

EXAM PAPER FOUR

Question 1) (Compulsory) Use the Revell method to decrypt this input: 11100 10 1001 0110100 101 1 1 1001 110 101 011 101001 101 10110 101 10110 1 10 1 1010101 11001 1011 1 1 101 01 10

"Right. Of the twenty originals there are twelve of you left. Congratulations. From here it gets harder. Oh, you can laugh, but I'm telling the truth. You've now got to put into practice the basic lesson you've learnt, which is a lot harder than it sounds, believe me. What you will be don't is acting as observers in an exercise conducted by UNION staff. You will be assessed according to results. I notice you're not laughing now!"

PRO FORMA:

DEAR:_ Mr Petrovic_

YOU HAVE FORMALLY PASSED THE ENTRY PROCEDURE UNDERTAKEN AT AMBERLAND. YOU HAVE NOW FORMALLY BEEN INDUCTED INTO THE UNION ARM OF THE FEDERATED CONCORDAT. AS A RESULT OF THIS YOU ARE ALLLOWED ONE WEEK PRE-COMMENCEMENT LEAVE. AFTER THIS TIME HAS ELAPSED YOU WILL PRESENT YOURSELF TO THE ADDRESS OVERLEAF. YOUR COVER IDENTITY HAS BEEN PREPARED AND WILL BE FORWARDED TO YOU WITHIN FORTY EIGHT HOURS. FOR THE TIME BEING YOU WILL MAINTAIN THAT YOU ARE BEING GIVEN A PUNITIVE TRANSFER TO MJO AT SOUTH LONDON SORTING OFFICE

Alex slept for almost twenty-four hours, as the backlog of adrenaline withdrawal, mental and physical taxation, anxiety and excitement all claimed him.

When waking a stream of hypnagogic images ran themselves past his inner eye. He twisted comfortably underneath the duvet, feeling an absence, an element missing.

Work! That was it, he missed work and the comfortable, boring routine it brought. That had been replaced by the insecurity of UNION and the excitement (or promise) of a job that did not consists of endless pen-pushing.

10) Low Times

HOLDING CELL 101

POLIZEI PLATZ OST

HAMBURG

OCTOBER

In an exchange agreement, the German Bundespolizei took into custody persons remanded for appearance in the civil or criminal courts when these persons were members of the Federated Concordat. This came about due to limited detention space available to the FedCon in Germany; it also made remand less arbitrary. The Bundespolizei were amenable about the arrangement since there existed a considerable financial incentive and they could 'maximise' prison space by filling those cells empty of DUR citizens.

This, then, was the reason for Lothar being incarcerated in the cells in Hamburg. He'd been separated from Peiter, cuffed, jacketed, yoked and stuck into a police people-wagon. He shared the space with six other unfortunates; a couple of drunks who still flared up at each other, a druggie, two Pax activists with scalp wounds that bled messily over the seats and lastly an obese, unshaven man who bleated continually about not meaning to hit his wife, not this time anyway. Lothar sullenly surveyed them all, cursing silently that either he or Peiter ever listened to that woman and her suggestions. Silently cursed, because the cops had a nasty habit of recording everything you said and using it out of context in prosecutions.

After an interminable journey, swaying uncomfortably in darkness, all seven occupants of the "happy-cart" fell over as it braked. The rear door swung open and all seven were manhandled out; sleazy neon lights overhead showed an anonymous entrance door, outside of which stood a plain-clothes detective and two uniformed cops, both of whom cradled shock-sticks.

For a minute Lothar felt he ought to try the plea he made earlier in an unsuccessful attempt to get away from the legal clutches of FedCon; he had plaintively stated that he wasn't "one of them", couldn't the nice police arrest him and forget about FedCon? To which the answer had been no, he'd been caught on FedCon turf so they could do pretty much what they wanted with him.

'Inside, you lot. Stand in the entrance hall. No, not you,' said the detective, holding back the wife-hitter. The others filed in and Lothar could hear one of the uniformed cops speaking; '… lesson for you. Like to hit women, do you?' and then came the static thud of shock-sticks for aching seconds. Those things hurt, too, really hurt in the hands of anyone adept in their use. The three cops reappeared with their twitching, spasming prisoner.

One of the trio winked at Lothar.

'Resisting arrest,' he said.

They took Lothar down to an old, well-used cell with harsh lights, a stinking toilet and a rigid bed. Mutant hissing came from a decrepit wall-speaker, it's armour grille devoid of paint after years of futile, vengeful attacks.

Bad though it undoubtedly was, Lothar had seen worse as a youthful soccer hooligan when he'd briefly witnessed the splendours of a Polish jail from the inside.

He sat down.

'Prisoner blah blah blah seventy-nine,' droned the wall-speaker in unintelligible tones. 'You are being detained under Protocol Eighty of the Concordat's Judicial Proposal. You are to be detained in this … ahem, no sugar … this facility until a representative of the Concordat arrives to take custody of you.'

His heart nearly stopped. The Fed! Jesus Christ Almighty, not them again. He'd imagined that he had slipped from their notice. Although all holding cells were soundproofed, years of hard use resulted in a deterioration in their anechoic quality. So police walking up and down the corridor outside 101 heard a dim, forlorn wailing coming from the cell.

Lothar was screaming.

'Newsflash! This just in: terrorist saboteurs of the Northern Anarchist Coalition have claimed responsibility in destroying the aircraft carrying members of the Dutch royal family as it returned from an official engagement to Greenland. At least ten members of the family are missing, presumed dead. More details in the hourly bulletin -'

The FedCon psychologist snapped his fingers and the news channel abruptly and obediently choked itself off. He wasn't a monarchist, not at all. What about the crew on that plane; didn't they deserve a passing mention? A few royal parasites less wouldn't harm the world but their underlings ought to at least get a mention.

Anyway, news of disasters with aircraft reminded him of his subject, Mister Lothar Hellman. Signs of severe trauma there, made worse by incarceration and years of past drug abuse. So; why the state of utter panic whenever he came into contact with the friendly Fed? It could be, of course, that Mister Hellman killed his companion Theo and then constructed a fabulation to salve his conscience and ease the memory.

He sighed. Time, in a matter of doubt, to turn to the Oracle. This particular oracle happened to be an Omax 1500, state-of-the-art German technology, with a Russian Ouspensky software package, at least 10,000 case histories indexed and cross-referenced and using this a puzzled mind-mapper could find answers to most questions.

Not all answers to all questions. Perhaps guidelines defined it better. They ought to be guidelines, thought the psychologist, because Mister Hellman's symptoms certainly didn't fit into typical case profiles.


	13. Chapter 13

11) Of Rats and Rain

SEPTEMBER

THE WARRENS

SHEFFIELD

Being a probationer, Alex needed to serve for the full duration of an operation, under an experienced eye. There didn't appear to be any criteria about what kind of operation probationers got assigned to. Police, traffic, Customs Control, FedCon or any other entity. In recognition of his past sins, Alex found himself in one of the less salubrious zones: The Warrens, in Sheffield.

The housing projects of the 1960's and the past century had long outlasted their useful life, rotting away from within as vermin and environment gnawed away at them. They had been demolished in the Civic Initiative Action of the early twenty-first century, the vacant ground then being allocated to various local projects before the Accelerated Housing Program began building. AHP was intended to provide relatively low-cost, relatively high-quality accommodation; the deck access design should have lasted for fifty years with a safety factor of fifty per cent. Now, however, they were old before their time. Patched-up, frangible, subject to a hundred forms of fabric fatigue, they now existed to house the underclass who moved into what became known as "The Warrens".

They were not unique to any one city; Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, London, all had areas of urban blight where crime and poverty were endemic, either as cause or effect or both.

Alex, as part of an ongoing police monitoring operation, run locally, came to replace a FedCon liaison officer who wanted to go on holiday (some holiday, in Alex's opinion - a month on the moon!).

Yorkshire people spoke oddly, to Alex, long used to the tones of the Home Counties. Yorkshire people spoke with a thick accent, strange dialect, slang that didn't seem English. The Sheffield sense of humour was unusual, too; dry and cutting. Like a saw.

The police made an effort to look after Alex when he arrived, bunking him down in their private quarters and giving him all sorts of goodies - periodicals, reference works, anachronistic 2-D pictures of pre-CIA Sheffield, glossaries and annotated reports. They wanted him to be well informed. Incidentally, the sheer amount of information Alex would have to ingest meant he would have to be intellectually able in addition to being physically capable. They also wished him to be adept at social monitoring, so they partnered him with an experience officer as an instructor and guide. From on high came an order to carefully monitor the monitor, as a favour to FedCon, a favour that could be traded in future for a return favour (such as access to Internal Net, FIDO or even PolSat). They didn't want their assignee to come to harm, so he got an anti-harm suit; they wanted him to harm others if necessary, so they gave him a gun (which he never removed from his station locker).

'That,' said Sergeant Barnes, 'is a drop.'

Alex glanced from the corner of his eye at the police officer. Of course it was a drop. Any sheer fall of over thirty metres could be called "a drop".

The pair were at mid-point of a walkway between two tenement blocks on the outskirts of The Warrens, where things got bad but not too bad, certainly not too bad for an assigned monitor. Merely murders, assaults, spectra of drugs offences, robbery, vandalism, plus innumerable other crimes.

'Oi, Sarge, fuck off and die you fucker!' chorused a flock of children no older than five, running past them. Barnes ignored them, so Alex ignored them too.

'Just playing,' explained Sergeant Barnes. ' When things are bad they throw poison darts.'

Oh great, thought Alex, no stones, just a curare cocktail on a spike. Don't let things get bad while I'm here!

The escorting policeman, noticing his charges scepticism, turned to explain: when the weather became hot, tempers ran ragged and the sporadic viciousness of daily life became pandemic. When the weather was cold or wet or both simultaneously it became much easier.

To return to the drop: it acted as the temporary deposit for illegal pharmaceuticals, left by a courier for another courier to collect. And why there? Because at the junction of two pre-fabricated slabs a small nick had been made, allowing a fine wire to dangle over the side from a little retaining toggle, at the end of which a small bag could be hung. Ergo, a drop. This time, nothing there.

On they went. People walking past stopped talking to stare sullenly at them, creating an unpleasant feeling that reminded Alex of his time in Kosovo. Sergeant Barnes was able to point out a lot of the onlookers with a précis of their involvement with the forces of the law: that was Irwin Moore, brother of Karl, who was currently doing seven years penal servitude in Wandsworth; she was Lisa Nixon, suspected of carrying for the Bacon brothers; that was Jolly James, no fixed abode, chronic alcoholic and petty thief; that was Peter Morrisey, out on bail for car theft (sixth time); Claire Heaney, who had beaten him over the head with a spike shoe end and who frequently did the same with her children; Simon Clarke, suspected of carrying and of killing ("no proof yet but we're working on it").

A whole compendium of offences. There was also a confounding factor present; when criminals went out for their constitutionals, non-criminals went indoors and stayed there, so an uninitiated onlooker may have gained a rather biased perception.

Barnes pointed out a thin wire strung between two tenement decks, easily a hundred metres from block to block.

'See that? Pirate radio antenna. The kids club together for the hardware, then they hire William Tell. He puts up the aerial and they broadcast until the BPI comes along and does them.'

"William Tell", it transpired, was a local with a crossbow, who could shoot a wire connected to a bolt across the gaps between buildings and thus create an aerial. Never arrested, he remained only a nick-name. The police didn't worry much; broadcasting kept a certain fraction of the local youth occupied, away from more nefarious pursuits. Pirate radio stations were like weeds anyway, get rid of one and another two sprang up to fill the airwave gap.

They descended a stairway, sixteen flights with refuse heaped rotting in every stairwell, because the refuse chutes broke years ago and the council collection service was erratic. Once at the bottom they walked out into the open, away from the sides of the tenement blocks. The tip was, either stay under the walkway or keep well clear of it, because if you were only a few metres of it horizontally then a large and heavy object might be propelled over the balcony to descend on your head. Like a wardrobe. Or a concrete paving slab.

Alex looked around and about, up and down, not only looking but seeing. In a pressure-cooker estate like this all you could do was expect the worst from people and be surprised if they didn't all turn out so. Barnes confirmed these unspoken thoughts by pointing out a few locals who were criminals, the offspring of criminals who were themselves the offspring of criminals. People like them never reformed; perpetual recidivists, they only persisted in what they saw as normal behaviour.

The twosome paused. On either side rose the tenements, great artificial cliffs stained with ancient bird droppings, where graffiti had been chiselled into the walls with power drills. Voices called like lost birds between the cliff faces as neighbours called to each other, no words distinguishable, just tones. The duo detoured into a vast recess in Block Fifteen, even danker and gloomier than the rest of the block, an access and service point for the ventilation and air conditioning ducts. Giant corroded pipes ran the width of the recess (ten metres or so in breadth), kinked and knuckled to allow council engineers access, not that they actually ever came any more.

The reason they detoured was so Sergeant Barnes could light up; not illegal or contra-regulations but it made him more human to any observers and he didn't want that.

Alex sat atop a pipe while Barnes smoked.

'I wouldn't do that,' said the policeman, amused.

'Oh. Why not?'

'Because there's some right queer creatures living in those ducts. Cockroaches and the like.'

"Cockroach" did it. Alex leapt down, his bottom tingling with alarm. To him, "cockroach" meant the Balkan variety, a monster that hissed, bit and flew with equal facility. Many families in Eastern Europe kept a trained pet rat to deal with them. Th Greater London Cockroach didn't measure up to it's cousin but it remained a nasty little beast. All the tenement blocks were infested with them. Also, there were winged ants, a thing called a silverfish totally unknown to Alex, plus earwigs, beetles and wasps.

'Why can't they get rid of them?' asked the tourist.

Ah, explained Barnes. To get rid meant having to fumigate, and to fumigate properly the interstices of the whole block needed to be gassed, a major operation that council purse-strings limited to an annual event. Even then, the target vermin over generations had developed a tolerance to chemical agents and many survived the gas attack. Within a month there would be as many little guests in residence in each household as there had been pre-operation.

'What we could do with, really, is a terrier bred down to about four or five inches long. You don't acquire tolerance to a bloody Jack Russell!'

"Terrier", "inches" and "Jack Russell" were unfamiliar to the Serb but he followed his companions line of thought anyway.

'What you need is a trained rat.'

'Pardon! A trained rat!'

'Yes. I am surprised you never heard of them. We used to keep one at home for the Brontejowa - uh, that is, the cockroaches. Lots of people do. They eat them right up. These blocks could do with a whole pack of them.'

Barnes nodded slowly and thoughtfully.

'You have an idea there.' A note went into his personal greenscreen and the two carried on. Once out of the tenement's shadow bright sunlight warmed their spirits and bodies the instant the sun came out from behind the clouds.

Every five minutes they needed to check in with Despatch Control to prove they were still alive and unharmed by giving their names and numbers. This acted almost like a barometer of how tense the Warrens were; if times between the checks were twenty minutes you could guarantee it was a cold, wet, miserable day with all the wrongdoers sensibly indoors; when the check-ins sidled down to forty-five seconds a mob riot would be imminent, guns and beer bottles full of home-made napalm. Five minutes could be described as the tense side of normal.

They warmed up for a few minutes. Barnes called in. Despatch spoke back to him in their impenetrable crackle-and-hiss, from which Alex could discern absolutely nothing. Perhaps a few years of duty in the Warrens listening to urgent chatter filtered through a handset of dubious quality enhanced hearing.

Their next route led into the very heart (still, not beating) of the Warrens; a square mile in the English measure, consisting of scrubby grass patches and dirt where a set of playing fields once existed.

'Odd,' commented Barnes, not explaining why. He called up Despatch Control. Alex took a good look around and saw nothing pleasant yet nothing out of place. There were grimy tenements on all sides, spotted with mould and rust; an ancient rusted relic (once a car) lay not far away, dead for years and rusting into obscurity; at dead centre of the barren grass stood a collection of pre-fab huts slotted together in the fashion of a child's building kit, surrounded by a high fence.

'I take it that we are going there?'

Barnes said nothing, just gradually increased his pace so his partner found that he had to make longer strides to keep up. Alex wondered what the game was. There didn't seem to be anyone around to threaten them.

In fact, as the staff at the station informed him later, the apparent absence of people gave cause for concern to any experienced watcher. Normally, as far as things around the Warrens ever approached normal, hordes of children played football on the Wreck, as the bare land was known; older children drove bikes across it, chased each other across it and watched adults trek across it to the police station to make out complaints, fulfil bail conditions, keep probation appointments.

Yet now there were no people present at all.

So why are we one notch short of running? Wondered Alex again. While they jogged on, Barnes threw quick glances from side to side, rapid cautious looks that made Alex peer closely in the direction of his associate's gaze. All around, the tenements seemed empty, but in the ground level garages - weren't those things moving in a few of them? People, maybe. Staying-out-of-sight people, people Plotting Unpleasant Things, maybe.

In front of them lay the pre-fab police station, surrounded by a three-metre fence topped by rusty razor wire. A thoughtful person already held the gate open in readiness for them and stood holding the gate and a four-kilo padlock, ready to shut it all up again. They beckoned urgently in a come-here gesture.

'Run!' they shouted.

Alex perversely looked to see what they would be running from, since he already knew where he'd be running to. He saw a mob of youths. Footballs and frisbees were gone, replaced by knives and nailed clubs. Clearly these sportsmen were now playing a different game today: Hunt the Policeman.Both policeman and probationer raced the last fifty metres like rabbits, into the palisaded station, hearing with mutual mixed feelings the gate rolling shut behind them. True, they were in and safe but they were also stuck in the station. They would have to wait until the helicopter arrived with canisters of pepper gas and aerosol anaesthetic. An unpleasant way to spend the weekend. Alex waited in the canteen, expecting gangs of riot police to arrive, coerce him into donning protective gear and make sorties against the assembled youngsters thirsting for blood and action outside. Shit, it felt as bad as conscription again. That itself had been abysmally awful, two years sitting in barracks being shouted at by loud-mouthed morons in uniform, with periods of standing on street corners armed with batons and shields: "Duties in Support of the State".

'What we really need,' said Barnes, ' is a spell of bad weather. 'Just our luck we've got an Indian summer. No chance of what we want.'

'Summer Indian?' asked Alex, unfamiliar with the idiom.

12) 

HAMBURG

MEDICAL ANNEXE

POLIZEI PLAZA OST

Once again the FedCon psychologist dropped himself into an over-stuffed armchair, but since the last time he had learnt to put a cover on his coffee cup. No spillage.

'Hello there,' said the other staffroom resident, a doctor. 'Tough morning, hmm?'

'Ja - sorry, yes, yes it has been,' replied the psychologist , reverting to his native Dutch for a second. 'I am getting nowhere with Subject Hellman. Very odd, very strange.'

The other man became professionally curious.

'Oh yes? The one I tested samples for -'

The Dutchman looked chidingly at his companion.

'Ethics, ethics…'

'Sorry. Hmm. Well, whoever I did those tests for had ingested one hell of a lot of drugs in the past. You should have seen the spectrograph - came out like a reference chart of illegal drugs.'

'But nothing chemically appropriate, really.'

'What do you mean by that?'

Careful not to mention names, the psychologist explained that the subject in question -

'Oh, damn it,' he grumbled, ' enough of this silly behaviour. Here's a transcript.'

WHAT FOLLOWS IS A VERBATIM ACCOUNT AS GIVEN BY THE UNDERSIGNED, GIVEN FREELY AND WITHOUT DURESS. THIS TRANSCRIPT IS DERIVED FROM TAPE RECORDS OF 21ST INST.

_SUBJECT:_ Is it on? Yeah? Oh, right. Uh, my name is - what? Oh. Yeah, okay, I'll remember. No name. Um. It was back in the summer, beginning of June I think, the seventh or eighth. No, it was the eighth. I remember now, we - Theo and me, that's who I mean - oh shit should I have said his name? Well anyway we were doing a tour in Germany. No, no, a tour is when you do courier work for drug gangs, you know, carrying for them. you go from one place to another and they give you a per centage. Anyway we were down near Munich, a place called Bergen near an airstrip. Ah, we were sleeping rough in a wood, after we'd been dropping acid and tripping. It was good because you could lie on your back and watch the jets coming in to land and take off. Ah - yeah, well like I said we used to watch the jets coming down or going up. Then we heard this one coming in low, but it wasn't making the right noise, like the engines had failed, yeah? It was like a whistling - I know, like those dive-bombers you see in old war films. Theo and me both got up to see what was going on with it and this jet just went smack! Right into the fucking ground, blew itself to bits. Loads of bits, they were all flying all over the place. I ducked but Theo just stood there staring. Then he, uh, what was it - oh yeah he said - ah! - well he said to me "It's absolutely un-fucking-believable, it's not blown up any more." That's pretty much what he said.

SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 10 SECONDS

Can I have a glass of water? Nothing stronger? Just a thought. Right, well, okay, I looked up where Theo was pointing and this jet that had exploded was putting itself back together. No lie, I swear. All the bits sort of floated back together and they weren't burnt of twisted or anything. When it stopped it looked like it never crashed at all. It just sat there in a crater all of its own.

SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 30 SECONDS

Ah, Theo and me looked at each other at the same time and I could tell he was thinking what I was thinking as well - are we tripping out or what! So I said "did you see that crashed jet go back together again" and he said "yes" so I knew it couldn't be a hallucination because we both saw the same thing at the same time. Well, Theo decided to go and see what this thing was, so he walked out of the wood. And then this guy got out of the cockpit and climbed down. The pilot. Surprised me to see that, somehow I didn't think there'd be anyone in the jet. He was poking around the wheels - it had it's wheels down you see - and he had his back to us so he didn't see Theo coming at him. Me, I didn't want to have anything to do with it, it gave me a weird feeling, fucking gooseflesh, right? I mean, I've seen strange things before but this - I don't know, it felt wrong, sort of. You don't expect to see things like that when you're straight, man. Suddenly this guy heard Theo, who was about ten metres away and he turns round and shoots him. Just like that. Bang. Then he looked around and kept on shooting because he didn't see any witnesses. That did it for me, I legged it out of there. I don't mind telling you I was just about crapping myself before that psycho got out of his fucking death-jet. Shooting Theo, I couldn't take that. It felt like being in the middle of the worst trip ever except it was real life. So I got as far from Munich as fast as I could and ever since then I've tried to keep well clear of the Fed. It was a FedCon jet, you see, with that great big sign of theirs on the side. I never trusted them before and now …

DEBRIEFER: Did the jet crash? Maybe you hallucinated it.

SUBJECT: It left a fucking great crater! Of course it crashed! I know the difference between real life and imagination and being on a trip. And he killed Theo - d'you think I imagined that? No way. It's no wonder I kept well away from you lot, is it! That bitch in Hamburg dropped us right in it, I'd never have gone near that warehouse if I'd known it was FedCon. Is there any chance of being sent back to the police?

SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 2 MINUTES

SUBJECT: That's it. That's all. You want me to take the lie test, I will. But there's something fucking weird going on in the world if things like that go on. You get me?

END END END

After his companion finished reading the psychologist took back the transcript and shrugged.

'We gave him the Taunus test and guess what? He passed. So he believes what he told us, at the least.'

'What do you think happened?'

'Ah! Good question. Along the lines of: subject Lothar being on a drug trip, murders his friend and subsequently forms a confabulation to avoid confronting it.'

There were holes large enough to drive a truck through in that theory, however.


	14. Chapter 14

13) Small Needle, Large Haystack

SOUTH LONDON SORTING OFFICE

SPETEMBER

Alex ended up being escorted through the underground tunnels again. This time it came about because he had no idea of how to get to the debriefing room, and this time he had only one escort who behaved in a relatively deferential manner. Alas, this time there was no slivovitz bottle; the room used was an improvement on Milos' cubby-hole, being a bland office suite like a million others Alex had seen or moved through. The presence of a gun rack on a wall spoiled the nature of the illusion. He stared distrustfully, first at the weapons, then at - surprise surprise - Milos, who greeted him with a sneeze.

'Good day. Sit, sit. Excuse my cold. Don't come too close.'

'Is this another disorientation exercise?'

'No. No, you passed your trial by fire and I'm here to give you an assignment. What do you think of that?'

Very little, really, said Alex to himself.

'Ah, very good. What am I doing, counting cars on a city-centre by-pass? Census checks? Helping old people to cross the road?'

If the psychologist had been listening, he could have told Milos to pile on the consequences of assignment.

'You're being sent in at what they call the deep end. Take this, it's your document wallet. Full instructions are inside, but if you want a précis … Okay. You will be official UNION second-line members accompanying the DRU police, since the Fed have been implicated in a possible crime, at the FedCon Research Germany facility. Near Bergen, if you know it. Your documents and disks state that you are working for the Mandated Judicial Overview so kindly bear that in mind. You are not a spy or a secret agent or a superman, you're an MJO member of the Fed. Behave accordingly. And before you leave, make out a shortlist of all your contacts in Greece. Names, addresses, occupations, relatives, the lot, okay?'

Such a request did not come unexpectedly but the timing did. Alex fondly imagined that he would be given time to sit down and discuss exactly who he ought to include and who he ought to leave out. Now he was told flatly to include everyone he ever met in Greece, which came to a suprisingly small number when totalled up.

Milos sneezed again, looking sourly at Alex, who slowly wrote names on a greenscreen, pausing every few seconds to pensively suck his cheek. When he finished, the other leaned forward.

'Yes?' asked Alex, expecting either a question or a statement.

'When you were trapped inside the police fort, in Sheffield, was it your idea about the rain?'

In fact it had been Sergeant Barnes who stated that "rain was the best policeman" and the sentiment appealed to him so much that Alex found a quiet corner, used UNION priority codes and his TACT and put through a request to Logistics -

- who came up with the goods an hour later with a cloud-seeder laying and spraying halogen crystals to the north of Sheffield, up-wind in a complicated dispersal pattern. Within another hour the downpour began. Slowly the besiegers dispersed, wet and depressed after a long wait to see if the clouds would disappear. Amongst the mob numbers had been a conscientious shadow, keeping an eye on his charge, which was how he came to be suffering from a cold.

Net result: nobody hurt, siege ended, a new (but expensive) method of crowd control instigated. And Alex was able to depart without having to don riot gear or baton charge hordes of youths, which he felt justifiably smug about. As for the initiative shown, Milos report, the cloud-seeder log and Sheffield police reports all went into UNION files via one route or another, passing through electronic filters until they reached a storage bin: notice had been taken.

'Now,' said Milos. 'You weapon issue. I believe you have a problem of some kind with this?'

Which happened to be quite wide of the truth, since Milos knew from exhaustive study that Alex detested guns.

'Well,' he continued, 'I'm afraid it's in the Contract, which you signed. All UNION members to carry a weapon for self-defence.' He gestured to the wall rack that housed a variety of hand-held weapons, both lethal and non-lethal. 'The only thing they don't do is specify what you choose.'

Alex felt uncomfortable. The temptation, of course, was to grab the nearest device and leave, but a shrill non-verbal alarm told him not to.

Eventually he selected a silvery, pencil-sized tube with a tapered end and on-off switch, very plain and functional compared to some of the high-tec cannons on display.

'That!' exclaimed Milos. 'Oh, well.' "That" referred to Alex's weapon, a Zap Gun, an electrical discharge side-arm that incapacitated in a non-fatal manner, just so long as the target wasn't too old or too young or too ill or the possessor of a cardiac condition. Zap Guns had been fashionable a decade ago, until people discovered how short a range they had, five metres on a good day being their absolute limit. Nor were they terribly accurate.

'When do I go to Germany?'

Milos checked his wristwatch.

'Not long. About twenty minutes.'

Alex looked up suddenly from signing his Receipt of Ordnance Issued form. _How_ long?

'Did you say twenty -'

'Yes.'

A whole train of thoughts ran through Alex's mind and into each other. Twenty minutes? What about his flat? And the car? Come to that, what about tickets? And he didn't speak German, either. Visas? Currency? If he was on the UNION payroll when did his account get a credit? Would it still be the end of the month? Wait!

He hadn't reckoned on the power of the Green Card and it's motile coded hologram. A flunkey presented him with one of his own suitcases packed with a sensible assortment of clothing and accoutrements; the same flunkey assured him that the flat was secure ("and by now probably bugged as well" added Alex to himself), the car parked and yes, his wages would be paid in at the end of the month. Also with the documents presented by Milos there happened to be a one year déclassé passport and a German credit card. The passport he would keep, the credit card to be returned on completion of the mission. Although not informed of it, he guessed that a close eye would be kept on the card's usage and any abuse would mean curtailment, or punishment and since he was now in UNION the punishment would probably be pretty severe

'Yes, very efficient but I still don't speak German,' he lamented to a flunkey, Milos and an escort when all four moved along the trackless corridors.

'Take this TACT that I just happen to have for issue to you, there's a translation channel on it somewhere. Anyway, they all speak English, don't they?'

Outside South London's geodesic sprawl stood a Logistics utility car with a bored driver at the wheel. Alex climbed up to the cab alongside the driver. They both looked at each other for a long second.

'Stansted. Terminal Three please.'

The driver idly selected a gear and turned the car around in it's own length.

'Short stay? Long stay? Overnight?' she asked.

'Short stay,' replied Alex. Very short stay, he felt like adding.

Whilst they motored on he broke the seal on his document package. As yet he didn't know anything about his flight - which carrier, which gate it left from, which German airport would be the destination nor how long it would take to get there. There were no tickets enclosed in the package so by deduction the carrier would be from Logistics.

This is all a bit of a mess, he mused. At least when I fly to Greece I have enough time to prepare for it. Maybe they threw me in to see how I coped with it. Maybe, maybe, maybe; perhaps their interest is in my reactions and not how well I carry out the task. Shit! How paranoid can you get! Neil would love this, wouldn't he, and what was the name of that woman he said fancied me? Damn, I can't remember her name; she ought to get a telling-off for sticking a name and address in my pocket. Oh! That's right, I could ask to see that - or will it be restricted access because it's evidence?

'Terminal Three, Short Stay. Have a good one, friend.'

The instant he departed the car, a stewardess in a micro-dress appeared. She looked alien; plastic surgery had rendered her face perfectly symmetrical and she wore the latest fad in opaque make up.

'Mister Petrovic of the Judicial Overview? Pleased to meet you, please follow me. We are departing on a special Logistics charter leaving from Gate Twenty Three. Do you need assistance with your luggage? Then follow me.'

Alex found it difficult to keep his eyes off the woman's behind as she led the way for him, not least because he swore that she had an advertising sticker on her left buttock.

They passed through a metal-detector frame that pinged when Alex crossed the threshold. A bored guard ambled over, saw the Green Card, nodded and returned to his station. Great, Alex commented silently. What if this one's a counterfeit as well?

After following the stewardess along corridors playing bland muzack they eventually left the terminal building and crossed the concrete apron to a waiting Logistics jet. It was a Mini-Mover adapted for passengers with a button-in compartment that sported a bar, a sixty-channel television, reclining seats and personal quadro stereos. Alex found himself to be the only passenger on the aircraft. Initially he thought he was being spoiled but the stewardess informed him that they were merely taking the aircraft to Austria and he would be dropped off at a refuelling point en route.

Refraining from drink, he dropped off to sleep nevertheless, awaking only when the aircraft pitched into it's descent for the airport at Munich.

His buttock-marked stewardess once again escorted him to a cab and another taciturn driver whisked him away. It all felt curiously anti-climactic, with no sense of having crossed any international boundary. Only street signs in German actually showed that they were in a foreign country, those and the neon signs. Of which there were few, becoming fewer as they drove, since RSFG was located well outside Munich in the countryside.

The darkness of this same countryside was broken by occasional spots of light until they approached RSFG, which was an enormous sprawling site, well illuminated by light towers along the perimeter fence. It took ten minutes to get through to the lobby building and the reception desk, where he wearily dropped his case. A receptionist looked blankly at him when he waved his Green Card.

A large brown hand descended on his shoulder from behind, making him jump and turn suddenly.

'Hello,' said Olukaside.

'Ah. Hello,' replied Alex, staring a little. Who was this?

'I'm the Field Officer for this Double Digit,' announced Olukaside.

Alex nodded, a little overawed by the tall Nigerian. It was implicit that both were UNION members even though this was never mentioned.

RSFG, long used to putting up visitors, had an accommodation room for the two; as the lesser person Alex got a smaller room and smaller bed and consoled himself that Olukaside needed a long bed to make sure his legs didn't dangle. The Nigerian felt almost elated at residing once more on terra firma; spartan conditions might be at RSFG but they were better than those aboard that flying antique, the Iceberg.

Next morning brought a piercing alarm call for Alex, C# sustained for twenty seconds. He crawled out of bed and dressed in the creaseproof coveralls packed for him. Milos had insisted on giving him a special forearm holster for his electrical weapon that chafed, so he stuck it in an empty pencil pocket. Then he clipped his TACT unit onto his belt and the Green Card in the receiver slot. Then a quick wipe of a third-hand earlink monitor and he was ready. So was Olukaside. The Nigerian waited outside Alex's room smoking a roll-up of something that smelt vile. Alex felt his nostrils twitch in affront.

'Good morning - ah, dijen dobrey? If you want to have breakfast, follow me.'

Olukaside knew RSFG well, and led Alex straight to the canteen, past the impressive environs of the complex, all bright white plastic, chrome fittings and strip lights. The overall effect of this design certainly gave the impression of clinical efficiency and it lacked for nothing in the cuisine department either. Alex ordered hot stuffed croissants with ersatz coffee, food still defiantly unknown in Britain despite the Channel Tunnel.

Olukaside ate a meal of scrambled eggs made with tomato and onion, then downed a bowl of muesli, two rounds of toast and ersatz orange juice. Then he lit up one of his disgusting little cheroots and puffed away with great satisfaction.

'Excuse me, do you have to smoke that bloody awful stuff?' asked Alex, irritated.

Olukaside raised his eyebrows. Not polite.

'But of course. No smoking where I've been on duty.'

'Does it have to be so disgusting? You could fumigate with it,' commented the Serb, drily.

'Um! Well I like it and it's cheap. Russian herbal tobacco, so it isn't covered by anti-smoking laws. Machorka, they call it. You never heard of it?'

'We in Yugoslavia are not known for smoking garden weeds.'

That made Olukaside laugh. He refused to get even slightly annoyed at his companions jibing, instead assuring him that when they started working the cigarettes would stay in his pocket.

Work began around a table with portable greenscreens lying upon it. A pompous German psychologist introduced himself, then a uniformed policeman. First to speak was the policeman, in accented but clear English.

'You people are, ah, here at the request of Doctor Festinger, to carry out an investigation into a murder he believes may have taken place. You are needed because the, ah, offence, if actual, will have taken place on Federated Concordat territory.

'Available to you will be an Utility vehicle and a portable electronic snout, and you will also have one ground sensor unit each.'

Satisfied, the speaker sat down. Next came Doctor Festinger.

'Ah, yes. We are reasonably certain that a person has been killed, a German transient called Theo Blum. His killer is in German police custody at present, but we need a body for forensic purposes and to make a case against the killer. The killer was obviously under the influence of drugs - read this transcript and you'll see why - but his testimony as validated by Taunus Testing bears up in one respect; he firmly believes that Blum is dead. So, then, do we. But a body is needed. Which is where you come in, thank you.'

Alex turned to look at Olukaside. This was it? A general purpose dogsbody - or dog, come to that - purely out to locate a rotting corpse. After reading the transcript he shook his head in disbelief; they were dealing with a pair of dosed-up, full time junk artists one of whom had indeed murdered the other.

'Where do we start looking?' asked Alex, in a tone that masterfully mixed disdain with resignation.

The policeman coughed into one hand.

'Ah. That is, we don't know. Merely that "it" happened in small wood.'

Both UNION members expressed exasperation at this news since RSFG's estate was immense and included innumerable small woods. Alex read the transcript again and had an idea. He almost failed to voice it, thinking that the police would have considered it already.

'Bergen-op-Gauss figures in these reports, doesn't it? Can we take it that they were on the flight path for it?'

Ollukaside nodded and added an idea of his own.

'What we need - what we want - are the weather reports for those days -'

'June seventh and eighth,' added Alex.

'Yes. Weather reports, cloud base, wind speed and direction. All these factors. From these we can find out the likely paths of an aircraft flying in the vicinity on those days, compared to flight paths filed at Bergen.'

'We could eliminate any wood not on a flight path!' concluded Alex triumphantly. Thus they could narrow the search. That was the theory. As for the practice …

When they had both examined hard copies of weather reports forwarded from the Weather Institute in Munich, it became possible to plot two flight paths used on June seventh and eighth, instead of nine possible ones. They then suffered a considerable delay until a clued-up lab assistant produced a map that included Bergen-op-Gauss and outlying woods to a distance of ten kilometres. Both printouts were superimposed and copied, one in large format, one in reduced size for ease of carriage.

'Let us go and search,' decided Olukaside.

A grey cloud-laden sky greeted them with spasmodic rain when they ventured out (perhaps because of this none of their German counterparts came to see them off). Their Yute came in day-glo orange, chipped and scarred to reveal matt green underneath, doubtless Bundeswehr surplus. One of the balloon tyres displayed the large patch that denoted an old accident; what annoyed Olukaside was the absence of a canopy for their vehicle, since that meant they would get wet.

'They could have given us a newer one,' he grumbled to Alex, dumping a conical case in the cargo space. He took up the smaller boxes that held their "ground sniffer units" and stuck one in each jacket pocket. He further decided not to allow Alex to drive the six-wheeler, getting in and behind the steering wheel himself.

'Off we go,' he proclaimed, squeezing the throttle trigger. A mistake. Although the bodywork of the Yute was badly worn, the engine was in perfect condition and it kicked in powerfully enough to take the front wheels up in the air.

'Hey!' snapped the anxious passenger as his teeth came together involuntarily with a loud "clack". 'Careful!'

The driver headed north at full throttle and paid scant regard to previously travelled tracks, making lumps of turf and mud fly off the wheels as they lurched along at high speed.

Alex checked the smaller map in his possession. Nearly up to Wood One. Good. Surveying all the other numerous copses possibly concealing corpses, he felt a slightly smug glow having eliminated so many of them. Smugness rapidly dimmed when the duo started their search, using a grid overlapping one of their large-scale maps. Alex, being the junior, got to carry the electronic snout, which was awkward and tended to tip forward when the holder's wrist grew weak. Using a snout like this meant a searcher could locate a buried body via thermal differentials and confirm a finding with the highly sensitive but short-ranged ground units.

_If_ there actually was a body to find. An hour of searching yielded nothing more than a decomposed rabbit. They had been persistently rained on and were acquiring great cakes of mud on their boots, making them waddle comically.

'Forget Wood One, okay?' decided Olukaside. 'Let's just sit a minute. This is a lot slower than I thought it would be. Are you tired?'

'A bit,' admitted Alex. 'More bored than tired, really. I don't mind carrying on if there's a body to find but what if there's nothing?'

'Lots of paperwork.'

'And if there is a body?'

'Paperwork again, but more of it. We can't win.'

Alex went over what he'd been told about site surveillance at RSFG. There wasn't any, except of the actual buildings, thanks to strict German rules about electronic snooping. If an intruder got through the perimeter fence then they had to hike for kilometres over the countryside to get anywhere near the complex, and Polsat kept beady electronic eyes on the landscape. Unfortunately for the two searchers, the disks for the time in question were long erased and might not even have shown up a target as small as two men on foot without equipment. Damn civil liberties, cursed the Serb idly.

Wood Number Two happened to be a blank also, eventually. They tramped back to their transport again, splashing into a stream on the way to clean their boots. Wood Number Three was empty of corpses, as were Woods Four and Five. They retreated back to RSFG to eat a warming dinner, then solemnly set out again for Wood Number Six. Alex spent the time silently wondering why there was such a low level of confidence about finding a body.

'They should have brought in a dog,' he complained to Olukaside when they climbed out of the Yute.

'What!' exclaimed his partner. 'Do you know how much they cost! I saw this on the news last week - there are only twelve left -' and he broke off to point to a small jet approaching Bergen-op-Gauss, flying directly over them. 'Well, that proves we're still on the flight path, I suppose.'

The end of the day saw no success at any location, and the two wet, muddy and tired men returned for eight hours sleep. Alex went to bed convinced that the police didn't really expect any body to be found and had managed to palm off the job of looking for a non-existent body to UNION, specifically himself and Olukaside. The Nigerian seemed to be a lot more patient than Alex, proven by his cheery greeting the following morning and devouring of an equally large breakfast.

Off they went on their trek again, drawing a blank at Woods Nine, Ten and Eleven, a procedure that took them all day and put a dent even in Olukaside's optimism. They began again the next morning and things changed at Wood Twelve.

Ping! Went the electronic snout, loudly, making Alex jump in surprise. A pair of lights atop the unit flashed. Olukaside stayed silent. Alex peered into the scope attachment with one eye, having got the trick of looking at the real landscape with the other eye. The false-colour image in the scope showed a long yellow blur in a frame of red and yellow blobs; his weather eye merely saw grass dotted with a few flowers.

'Ah, Mister Olukaside. Will you test this with your sniffer? We have a trace here but I don't know what it is.'

The Other man pressed his probe against the indicated area of ground and waited. Ten minutes later they compared the probe's reading against a baseline graph on the case.

This trace, according to x over y, was three months old. Alex counted weeks backward in his head and came to the first week in June, approximately. So, it was old enough to be the decomposing body; the microbe count and emission traces corresponded with a decomposing body; the trace was large enough to be a rotting body.

It was a decomposing body.

Olukaside called back to RSFG on his TACT, placing a Most Urgent priority on it, yet still had to wait twenty minutes before anyone acknowledged the call. Alex, standing well clear of the TACT, could still hear the policeman's exclamation from the TACT's speaker.

'Where are we? Designated Wood Twelve, the one near the pond. Yes, a pond. You'll see the Yute, anyway. Oh, don't worry about _that_. I want to keep my breakfast down.'

The duo packed up their equipment and sat in their vehicle, waiting for the expected entourage to arrive. Which it did eventually, led by a jet copter flying very low. Alex noticed a great pregnant bulge in the belly of the aircraft and realised it denoted a larger and more sophisticated version of the electronic snout he had been carrying about. Soon after the aircraft arrived they were joined by a small fleet of vehicles equally composed of Bundespolizei and RSFG. The whole of Wood Twelve, festooned with tape, became off-limits whilst forensic staff busied themselves with protective plastic sheets. Inspector Dieter came over to see the successful Double Digit team and offered his congratulations to them.

'I am very, ah, surprised. I did not think that your, ah, search would reveal anything. But you do not have the correct area.'

At first Alex thought the policeman meant they had strayed away from the flight path plan, so he showed their position on the map to Dieter, who tutted and shook his head, concerned in a self-important manner about saving face over a minor detail.

'No, this is not correct. There is no pond.'

'Yes there is, look -' began Alex, pausing when he saw Dieter had turned and walked away. Ignorant shit, thought the Serb, you didn't expect us to find anything, it embarrassed you when we did so you get snotty over a pond. He jumped out of the Yute and threw stones into the pond, just to prove a point.

Later that night Alex and Olukaside both attended the rapidly convened post-mortem. The remains taken out of Wood Twelve were well decomposed and smelt appalling, but what really made Alex feel ill were the carefully bagged wildlife specimens arrayed on a lab table, all taken from the corpse. They moved.

Overhead, a video camera on an extensor arm, with a scavenger mike attached, came down to film the remains, programmed to keep a maintain a consistent view whatever the investigating surgeon did. Her first action was to open up the skull with a sonic saw, creating a horrendous buzzing that set everyone's teeth on edge and also creating the evil stink of burnt bone.

The German spoke to herself about her progress and findings, quiet asides in German that were picked up by the microphones for playback later that day.

The post-mortem's post-mortem was attended by both UNION agents, Dieter, Festinger, the surgeon and a software technician. They congregated in a nondescript room that possessed table full of exhibits, a large-scale wall map and a television screen. The surgeon stood up to talk first, cradling a pointer.

'Good morning,' she said in English. 'I am Doctor Franck, as you already know and I will begin by describing what I found last night. The proceedings will be officially recorded for the police files. If you have a question please ask straight away, there is no need to wait.

'The body was that of a male, aged about twenty three, Caucasian, one metre forty in height, approximately seventy kilos in weight. These facts correspond roughly with the description of Leo Blum that we have. His dental charts have not arrived yet and there are no police tissue samples to cross-match with, but we have Renovator to work with. Anyway, we shall go on.' She motioned to the software technician.

"Renovator" had a faintly familiar ring to it, having been mentioned during Alex's training and whilst with the Sheffield police; this would be the first time he experienced it in action.

First on the monitor was the flensed skull of the victim, bleached bone denuded of all flesh. The Renovator program began: a web of muscles formed over the bare skull, glistening and wet, with a touch of poetic licence. A stark mask, made more grotesque by the sudden appearance of two eyeballs in the empty sockets. Areas of fat filled in, then a final covering of flesh to produce a face. With a flourish the software technician produced a coloured hard copy. A good likeness of Theo Blum when compared to a driving licence photograph, more closely descriptive than a series of forensic measurements.

Next the surgeon moved on to the cause of death.

'The victim suffered death due to multiple gunshot wounds, eighteen in total. We took out eighteen bullets from the body, nine Squash-head and nine armour-piercing. From powder traces and the single flesh burn identifiable on the remaining skin I would say that the fist shot, direct to the head, has to be the immediately fatal one. It was a Squash-head bullet, thus tissue-quake and hydrostatic shock probably pulped most of the left hemisphere, killing him instantly. The other seventeen bullets were superfluous. You cannot recover from a skull full of jelly where a brain should be.'

Dieter nodded in a self-satisfied manner to himself.

The software tehcnie moved over to a wall map and took the pointer from Doctor Franck.

'Using a flouroscope, infra-red filters and a microbial census, we located a trail of bloodspots on the earth and grass, leading back from the burial site towards the pond. The killing therefore took place at or near the pond.'

'What kind of weapon?' asked Olukaside.

'A fourteen point five millimetre - that's fifty-five in old calibre - handgun, probably an M77 with caseless ammunition. They hold up to twenty rounds. We're waiting for a forensics report on the rounds taken from the body.'

'Have you looked for the weapon?'

'Of course! Including the pond. No traces of the weapon anywhere.'

Another point occurred to Alex about the burial. That body had been carefully hidden, so as to leave no indication that a grave existed; the sod had been cut with a knife, the earth taken from underneath scattered over a wide area to disguise the excavation, Theo's body dumped and covered with lots of earth, the turves carefully replaced. Not that Alex had very much experience of murders, yet the killing had been very precise with none of the usual random sloppiness that transpired when such crimes occurred. Could they perhaps be dealing with a person used to killing? Conversely, how possible could it be that a drugged-up lowlife would abruptly shoot his friend, nor by accident either with so many holes; carry or drag the body hundreds of metres to a wood, showing a sensible caution; construct an expertly-made grave - and then run away to Hamburg and confess it all once they were arrested. Lothar didn't have a gun on his person when arrested, nor was there one in the docklands squat he'd been living in, nor did Pieter ever mention his fellow criminal having carried a gun. Lothar the guilty party? Didn't seem likely. In fact it seemed wildly inconsistent, a bizarre alternation of behaviours. Dieter, however, felt assured that they possessed enough evidence to charge Lothar; as for inconsistencies - remember, they were dealing with one of the drug sub-culture who probably didn't know what his own name was at the time of the murder.

The group adjourned for lunch. Alex ate listlessly, not really interested in what went into his digestive system since his mind wandered elsewhere. He didn't feel happy with the direction their post-mortem was taking -could it be possible that a third man had been present with Lothar, a third man who helped to commit the offence?

'We need a new lever to work with,' he offered to Olukaside.

'Right.'

'I'm going to see that software technie again.'

'Right.' Then: 'What for?'

Alex tapped the side of his nose.

'If you want dirt, start at the bottom.'

Olukaside frowned, wondering if he was the butt of some strange Slavic joke.

The software technician present at the post-mortem looked less than happy to be disturbed at lunch but he was flattered by the attention. As Alex suspected, there had originally been more to the forensic examination than had been presented to the Double Digit team. The discussion proved to be his first use of the TACT unit's translation function and he found it to be accurate, if a little slow.

'How sure are you that a gun of this type - Em Seven Seven - is the murder weapon?'

'Oh - quite certain. Not positive one hundred per cent, mind you, but fairly certain. We don't have the relevant database here, you see, so the information needs to go to the Bundespolizei and back again once it gets approved. Takes a while.'

'Hmm. Are they common, these guns? That is, could they be traced -'

'Huh! I shouldn't think so, there's thousands of them in the SENATOR armies. M77's aren't exactly common, but they aren't rare. You couldn't trace this one, not easily.'

'If it is one.'

Feeling his veracity to be in question, the technie bristled. He pushed his seat back from the lunch table and looked round at his fellow technicians.

'Hey, you want to make certain? Go shoot a few practice bullets from one and compare their signatures. Won't be the same, of course, but they will be similar, close enough to see if there really is a connection. Now go away and let me eat my lunch in peace.'

Alex did just that, being literal. He went to Olukaside and asked for permission to follow his idea.

'Fine, just don't go annoying our hosts.' He carried on eating. For such a tall, thin man he could certainly put away a lot of fodder without trace.

Alex borrowed an M7 from a "flexible" security guard, upon producing his Green Card, and managed to browbeat a technie into producing a pair of ear-protectors and a bucket of sand. Then he prowled around the bright shiny corridors of RSFG until a suitable empty room presented itself. Setting the fire bucket against the wall in a corner, he took up the firing stance as taught during the Meatgrinder.

'Everything alright? Oh! Goodness!' came a voice from behind him.

Alex turned around quickly. He looked, unknown to him, rather threatening from the rear; a man wearing ear-protectors, with a bulky TACT unit clipped to his belt, carrying a pistol and with a Zap Gun sticking out of one boot.

The Asian woman in the doorway looked alarmed, as well she might.

'Hello! Just a ballistics test. Nothing to worry about.' He smiled winningly (he hoped) and the woman ran off, either due to alarm or satisfaction.

Trying to remember old instructions, Alex fired twice into the sand-filled bucket, twin colossal explosions in the confined space that impinged even with his ear-protectors set to exclude everything. Then he carried the bucket off to a laboratory. To find the bullets meant sand-sieving, then it was off to collect one of the evidential bullets and compare it in a stereoscope with a sand-bucket one.

They were congruent. Not identical obviously since two different guns had been used, but similar. Therefore, the gun used had indeed been an M77. Alex felt faintly foolish, having expended a lot of effort to prove what they already knew. He tutted mentally; if this investigation had been carried out by the Bundespolizei, if FedCon hadn't insisted on keeping jurisdiction on it's own territory, they could have known positively about those bullets form the start. Very dog in the manger.

He sighed and took the pistol back to the security guard.

'Thanks,' said the guard sourly and sarcastically. 'They reported an idiot with a gun running around. I better not get into trouble over this.' He popped the clip out of the handle's magazine housing. 'And you used two rounds. I have to account for these,' he said. "I have to account for these you stupid bastard" his expression added.

'Sorry.' Alex failed to sound even slightly sorry. He turned to go and realised just what he'd seen and turned back slowly.

'Just a second. Do that again, what you did with the clip.'

'You must be joking!' snapped the guard. 'No more favours.'

'

'That's what happened. They never expected to find a body. When we did they were caught by surprise, without any plans, and the forensic search didn't get properly co-ordinated.'

'And so?' replied Olukaside, not obviously impressed.

'So they checked the pond all right, but only with metal detectors. I know, because I asked Dieter. A search like that would only have shown up metal objects or objects with metal in them, right?'

'A fair definition of a gun, yes. Is this leading somewhere?'

'It is! That gun, the murder weapon, had a plastic magazine for the bullets, a plastic disposable magazine that the killer would have to load themselves, insert themselves and eject themselves.'

Olukaside's frown cleared.

'Fingerprints on the magazine. Yes, that would be a positive indicator. If there is a magazine, if there ever were any fingerprints on it and if they remain.'

Privately, Olukaside shared the bafflement that Alex felt about the killing; it bore too many tell-tales of the skilled operator to the work of a drugged-up drop-out. But who, then! A third man? That added a layer of complications.

'There may have been a third man, you see. If there were fingerprints on the magazine - not Lothar's - then that would be true.'

Again, this would raise questions. Why stand in a pond to kill Theo; who was the killer; where did they come from; why carry out such a killing?

That night, when reception improved, Olukaside transmitted his findings to the Iceberg, scrambled via his TACT unit. To his surprise an actual person answered him; Nils, who felt stunningly bored at his duty console.

'Hello ICE07, Senior Super Nils. I that who I think it is - tall, dark but not very handsome?'

'Less of that, this is an official report. We decided to re-check the actual murder site with seismic sensors and uncovered a discarded ammunition clip. This had one and a half viable prints still on it, that came from neither the suspect or victim, so a third man is now postulated, the man who actually carried out the killing. We need to run the prints to you and a full comparison run with all the collected databases.'

'What! That would take forever.'

'Sooner started, sooner finished. On with the report. There appears to be a consensus in the Bundepolizei that Lothar Hellman is the guilty party, that there are no other suspects, a position I feel they will change when this evidence is presented to them, eventually. The investigation continues.'

Olukaside signed off, then lit up one of his cigarettes for a quiet think. Being Field Officer meant writing out the report for (up the line of command and perusal) Weiss. The report could be done in one of two ways: precisely, with no intrusion of doubt, or with all the hedges he'd felt. Might as well choose the latter; Weiss knew enough to doubt a bland report and to question the reporter personally, which meant a summons to the Presence for a grilling and after a six month tour of duty the Nigerian felt no hurry to return to the cramped, smokeless, flying antique.

While his superior coded up a report, Alex went for a drink in the canteen, finding to his disgust that they only had non-alcoholic drinks on sale. Subsidised and cheap but definitely not stimulating.

Damn and shit! I wanted a drop of spirits. That was a good idea of mine, it ought to be celebrated. I bet Oyewole claims it as his. That's rank for you. Oh well, let's have some of that nice tasty German lager without any nasty alcohol.

He walked down the serving aisle to pay for his plastic stein of lager. There was no attendant at this time of night, just a scanning eye, pay slot and price indicator set into a blank metal wall. The good thing about night in the canteen was the lack of competition for tables. There were only a few night-shift workers on their coffee-breaks and not wanting to interfere, Alex sat at a separate table.

'Hey, over there!' called a woman in Serbian. 'You want to come over?' Curious, Alex trotted over with his lager. There were three people at the table, Elizabeta, Morika and Bruno. The first was Serbian, the latter two German, able to get by in English as conversation developed.

'You're the one who has been turning RSFG upside down,' stated Bruno.

'That's me. Just a nuisance from MJO.' He drank his lager. Dear me, ran the thoughts in his head, people have been talking. Training said that this wasn't supposed to happen. What to do now.

The drinkers remained relaxed and affable, simply wanting company, conversation and gossip, if available. Bruno got another round of drinks and refused to take any payment from Alex. They got around to talking about thirst, heat, then the hottest places they had ever been.

'Somalia,' stated Bruno. 'Trouble-shooting refrigeration plant. Man it was so hot there, so hot you could see the salt forming on your skin.'

'Rhodes,' said Elizabeta, not adding any details.

'Um. Let me see. Oh, I know, a day trip to Tangiers, from Gibraltar. Very very hot. Indeed,' said Morika, with emphasis.

'Nuevo Laredo. Especially with the napalm.'

For a moment the other three exchanged glances. Just who were they drinking with - a soldier?

'Were you in the army? A soldier?' asked Morika, doubtfully, thinking it a shame if he was and turned out to be as stupidly macho like every soldier under the sun, especially since he possessed such nice sad eyes.

'Ha!' retorted Alex, a touch of fire in both eyes and voice. 'Elizabeta ought to know the answer to that one. 'Course I was in the army, national conscription at eighteen. Two years.'

'I didn't like my national service but you seem to hate yours,' stated Bruno.

Alex sneered.

'It was worse than prison could be. Actually I spent time in a military prison and that was worse. A total waste of two years. When I came out they - the State, the Education Ministry, that is - had changed funding for student grants so I never got a chance to go on from college.'

'What the hell did they throw you in jail for! You don't exactly look the hardened criminal!' half-joked Bruno, for once not stating things flatly.

'Ah, yes, well, I told my commanding officer to go fuck himself and punched him on the nose, actually. He thought he could make me clean toilets by shouting at me so I shouted back. Then he hit me so I hit him back.'

That got him another round of drinks. His companions admired his moral stance. Alex, however, knew what his outburst of temper cost in the long run. He took a longer perspective now.

'Yes, I saw what armies and war does to people, in Mexico. I cannot understand why but the innocent always suffer.' Everybody nodded at this truism.

There. That was quite enough. Now he'd probably dream about the bus full of dead children or about driving a truck into the Galleria, unable to get past second gear.

Morika looked at her watch.

'To preserve life, it's a wonderful thing,' she said, looking him right in the eyes. His heart gave an extra hard beat that reverberated up and down his body because that used to be a saying of his and she had a nice smile. No, not nice, nice didn't do it justice. Alluring.

'Alluring.'

'Pardon! What did you say?'

'Uh - sorry, I spoke what I thought. I meant your smile. Oops. Am I being rude?'

'No. But if you can say that, then I have to be allowed to say that you have wonderful sad eyes.'

Bruno and Elizabeta, aware of where the conversation would lead, tactfully and quietly said goodbye and departed. After they had gone a slightly strained silence fell. Alex looked appraisingly at Morika; she was thin and tanned with a wild shock of dark hair and true, she did have an alluring smile with lips that swelled like fruit. Of course, while he studied her she studied him, seeing a man on the short side of average, with a neatly trimmed moustache, Mediterranean complexion and a pair of expressive eyes that hinted at dark depths. For a Serb he seemed to be refreshingly free from the sexist crap the men back at home came out with.

'Listen, Alex, I have a suggestion.'

'Go ahead, please.'

'Would you like a coffee?'

'Hmm? A coffee? Ah, certainly.'

He stood up first and gave a dazzling smile. Morika led the way and Alex found himself staring at her buttocks, clad in mock-denim. She turned around and frowned at him for this, but he defused the implicit criticism with another smile of such sincerity that Morika felt unable to chide him. Heart on his sleeve.


	15. Chapter 15

14) The Nice Man Cometh

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

STATE CAPITOL ASSEMBLY BUILDING

AUSTIN

TEXAS

Mad Jack was back! The word was out amongst the staff in the building, making the September air seem even colder than normal, creating a stir from basement to penthouse; secretaries found memos to type, supervisors discovered people who weren't working, security guards made people queue for searching.

A court clerk received a call from their contact at the airport, saying that McClusky just left, a message that got passed up the line until it reached a penthouse suite, that of Congressional Aide Cheyne. He passed it back down the line of communication again until it percolated down to the lowest level.

Great, he told himself, not meaning it at all. Half an hour to prepare, not long but it will help.

In fact it didn't. Ever one for a bit of sharp practice, McClusky had in fact left the airport thirty minutes ahead of his official convoy. The first anyone in the Assembly Building knew of this was when an olive drab jeep screeched to a tyre-abrading halt in the street below. Four uniformed figures leapt out, the tallest of them leading the way up the Capitol steps two at a time. Once they reached the portico two armed guards hesitated before coming to attention. Their salutes were returned by the men in uniform. When the party had passed the two guards exchanged knowing glances with each other.

Mad Jack and his companions did not enter the building via the lobby, going over to the lifts on the left instead. Taking the middle one they rode express to the top floor by using a MagIC key to override the security brakes, thus reaching the top floor without being seen by any but a handful of people.

Cheyne was dialling through to his manager when the suite door flew violently open under the impact of a kick, done for effect since Mad Jack unlocked it first. The aide jumped so violently that the cordless fell out of his hand. And then Cheyne's worst possible scenario came true as Senator McClusky, wearing a camouflage uniform with the silver eagles and the Lone Star Guard fatigue hat he favoured, stamped into the suite.

'Hi Cheyne, surprise surprise! On your feet, quickly now boy.'

'Ahh, uh, yes sir, Senator. Mister McClusky.'

The tall Texan took his aides place and put his booted feet squarely upon the veneered table top. Cheyne winced internally; that table top cost a hundred dollars per square inch and here the Senator was, treading dirt into it and scratching it, too.

'Cheyne, Sergeant Farrell here has come to inspect the security of your premises and staff and I'd like you to escort him while he does so. Is that okay with you? 'Cause it is with me.'

The aide gulped awkwardly. There was no realistic way he could refuse and remain in employment.

Sergeant Farrell looked extremely bored, cracking his knuckles one after the other. Essentially a five-and-a-half foot square of muscle, the NCO obviously couldn't care less about inspecting the Capitol Building, it's staff or the security precautions. Nor did McClusky, but he did want Cheyne out of the way. Putting a meaty arm around Cheyne's shoulder, Farrell carefully pushed him out of the room, pulling the door shut behind them. The three remaining men visibly relaxed. One of them, with a major's insignia, produced what appeared to be a humidor and swept the room with it. The single light in the device blinked green.

'Okay, we're clean.'

McClusky expected the room to be clean and bugless since he had spent several thousand dollars on interior design, hiring an ex-Agency man to install a jamming device, when the room was refurbished a year ago.

'Well,' said McClusky. 'Shall we have a drink? Dave, you can play mother.'

Dave Cordman, the major, poured out three tumblers of whisky with a stiff jolt in each, then handed one each to McClusky and another to the third man, Peter Stone, a captain.

'Here's to a hit,' toasted McClusky, macarbrely.

'Ah, right, cheers,' replied Cordman, knocking back a big swallow. Stone drank but remained silent.

'By the way, did our weak link problem get resolved?' asked Mad Jack. Stone took another sip, grinned bleakly but stayed silent, still.

'Oh yes,' replied Cordman. 'We took a day trip to one of the open-hearth furnaces up at the Scranton Museum and threw the weak link in. Total melt down.'

A satisfied silence settled.

'Are we going to increase volume of the product we're shipping?' asked Stone.

Mad Jack shook his head.

'Nah. Expansion is how we acquired the weak link in the first place.'

Another silence fell while they sipped away, savouring the spirit.

'This is top-dollar whisky, Jack,' commented Cordman, impressed. The senator winked.

'All the way from Glen Shiel, Scotland.'

Cordman blinked. What about the embargo? Ran through his mind, and the senator picked up on his expression.

'Hey, Dave, remember my name. Blood is thicker than water, unless it's aqua vitae, better known as _uisge beathe_ in Gaelic.'

After a while, bored of the business going on between McClusky and Cordman, to which he was emphatically not privy, Stone sat down at the room's terminal and began tapping in request codes at random. One after another the terminal rejected every word he put in. Mad Jack looked on in amusement, having finished discussing things with Cordman. The latter walked over to the busy key-tapper.

'Pete, you may as well leave it. Cheyne will have altered all the access passwords. You may have read the background file on him but blind luck will only get you so far.'

Stone cursed and punched the screen.

'How do we get in?'

Cordman momentarily wished he had one of those Total Access Computer Terminals that the Fed Commies issued to their agents. With one of those it would have been easy. Without one there was only one way he knew of at the moment, and that would be to dial in to Open Sesame, have them lock onto Cheyne's modem and speed a datastream to break the passwords. An expensive process costing upwards of a thousand dollars per second.

'What time do you have?' asked McClusky, suddenly.

'Two twenty-three. We're okay for a while yet.'

'Yeah. Oh, by the way, I hear some longhair liberal comedian is using my name in his act, saying how reactionary I am in regard to drugs. Sending me up.'

Cordman frowned. So?

'Isn't that good?'

'No it isn't!' snapped Mad Jack. 'I don't want my name associated with drugs, hard, soft or couldn't care less, full stop. See to it.'

Great, thought Cordman, careful to keep his disapproval internal. No, actually, wait a minute, we can make this look good. Use Phillips, that homo PR aide of Cheyne's, we've got a hold on him; get him to give our comedian friend an envelope of cash after informing a friendly journo. That way the longhair gets a reaming, Phillips goes down and Senator Orde is blackened by implication. Two birds, one stone. Yeah!

'Okay, sir, consider it done.'

Meanwhile, Stone had managed, by sheer luck, persistence ( and a lack of imagination on the part of Cheyne, who used his wife's name as a password), to gain access to part of Cheyne's computer records. Not all of them, just enough to make interesting reading.

'Hey, come look what I found. Phone calls, a record of phone calls Cheyne's made.'

The monitor displayed a list of the phone calls that Cheyne had been making that day, starting from early that morning. Stone proudly flourished a hand, showing what he stumbled across. When Cordman came over to have "an investigate" he spotted an outgoing call to the offices of Senator Orde, made only minutes before they had arrived.

'Senator, guess what we found. A call going out -'

'To Senator Orde's office. Yeah, I know.'

Now, how did he know that! Wondered Cordman. If he knew already he kept it under his coonskin pretty damn well.

'Hey, Dave, it was pretty friggin' obvious, you know. Orde put pressure on the selection panel and one of his pigeons got appointed, obviously to keep an eye on me and report back to Orde and his staff. It goes on more at election time, that's the only difference. And before you ask, yes we have a man in their camp. Well, now that I know for certain what Cheyne is, he's neutralised.'

Yeah, right, agreed Cordman. Someone else to take the place of Phillips, in fact. Oh, that's neat! I like it. Occasionally he found himself wondering if perhaps Senator Orde didn't have a member of staff plotting his, David M. Cordman's, demise, thoughts that even more occasionally led him to question his involvement in the cut-throat world of American politics. However, once you were in, you didn't leave. Not voluntarily, certainly.

'Two forty-five. Time to go. Button up tightly, folks.'

They went ostentatiously downstairs, making sure that their presence became known to one and all, spreading what Mad Jack called "a little healthy fear" amongst the Capitol workers. McClusky stopped once or twice to chat to people he knew.

By the time the threesome reached the lobby it was nearly three o'clock and before they stepped outside Mad Jack drew Cordman aside for a quiet word.

'Dave, just a word. I know you've organised this. That's all good and fine, but bear this in mind - if I go, my people know where your family live and ten minutes later you'll be a widower without kids. So if Orde got to you, to arrange this, they're dead. Okay! Good! Now, let's go.'

Not for the first time, Cordman considered how chilling it was, the way McClusky could switch from paranoid threats in a jovial tone to an expressionless matter of fact tone, maintaining a cheery smile the whole time.

By now the official motor cavalcade had arrived and parked in the reserved space outside the Capitol Building. In some confusion, the guards and drivers were sitting in their vehicles, leaning on them or sitting on the Capitol steps. Onec McClusky started down these steps people all leapt around busily, communing on earlink monitors, firing up engines, opening doors.

Mad Jack reached halfway down the steps before the event happened, as arranged. Between lifting up his right foot and putting it down, an invisible hammer swung from nowhere to hit him over his entire chest, driving all the breath from his lungs. The steps flew sideways, then up and sky came over, then steps again. He breath wouldn't come and he couldn't feel his chest. The edge of a step pressed into his cheek. Nothing hurt, not yet, in fact he felt numb all over. Gradually he realised there was a chorus of shouting and yelling going on all around him. Peter Stone shouted "The roof! The roof!"; a crackle of shots were taking place in the background.

It took less than a second for McClusky to realise that he had been shot, by a gunman probably situated across 15th Street, on the roof or upper floors of the District Capitol Office.

All this for the Ethics Committee, he grimly told himself, then passed out.

Father McCutcheon turned the radio off. He tried hard not to feel the hand of Divine Retribution behind the shooting of Mad Jack McClusky, knowing that the fratricidal politics of the New America Party were more likely to be responsible. Still, the biter bit, he told himself. Now _he_ knows what it's like, to suddenly get shot for no reason.

The priest was not bitter about those of his friends and parishoners who had been disappeared, and in fact could find it in his heart to pray for the souls of those who did the disappearing act. Faith. It consoled and supported him in his struggle against the forces that had hijacked political power in America, forces that even now would be groping their way towards him. With a determined straightening of his back, he turned the power on and began to watch as the ancient Gestetner machine began its noisy duty, cranking off the sheets that he would distribute later tonight to the group leaders. They in turn would pass them out to their group members, who would paste or post or hide the leaflets where ordinary people could see them. McCutcheon was a member of the American Catholic Underground, that tentacular (not to say hydra-like) organisation that had developed in opposition to the NAP, one of the weedlike underground groups that so distracted the FBI . The priest had discovered the Gestetner wrapped in a rotting tarpaulin down in the cellars of the Catholic Mission over a year ago, and knew immediately that it had been a sign from God: spread the truth, give people the gospel news and defy the censored media. He knew people here in Seattle in the Underground and promptly joined, creating the leaflet titled, simply, "The Light". Never more than a double-sided sheet of A4, it had so aroused the ire of the FBI, the NAP, local and state police and for all he knew the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms too, that a million-dollar reward now sat on his head. Despite that, he had been at liberty for a year, puncturing the streams of lies and deceit that the government pumped out, receiving tips and information from friends and relatives, from people within the establishment who hated what it had become, from sources abroad.

Finally, the copying machine clattered to a stop and he turned it off, with an affectionate pat. He feared the noise it made when operating, knowing that it might be the clue that tipped off the police to his operation. In the fall he'd had to move it from the Mission when a curious passerby had heard the racket through an injudiciously opened window. They might not say anything to anyone, but then again … And the transfer had been the closest to disaster he'd ever come. He'd been driving to the church with Stan Mazurka, a brawny parishoner who could carry the machine single-handed, when a patrol car pulled them over on a random check. Stan had paled and muttered prayers when the patrolman swaggered over. Once the hard-eyed policeman saw the priest and the tarp over the Gestetner, he got curious and told them to uncover it. Father McCutcheon was thinking of excuses as he tugged the cloth loose and the cop saw the machine, his eyes widening a little. For a second he looked at the machine, then gestured for McCutcheon to cover it again.

'Nah. Nothing here,' he called to his partner. 'Sorry to have troubled you, Father,' he said, with a deadpan wink.

'The guy upstairs heard me,' avowed Stan.

Father McCutcheon did not debate the point.

Now, Stan was back again, in the chapel. He had ushered in a small, dark and exotic-looking woman who looked around her with a curious and unreadable expression.

Mexican? wondered Father McCutcheon, or Latino of some kind. He was puzzled at her presence here, near the Canadian border, when Mexico was so much further south. The pipeline would get her to Canada if she needed, but Mexico would have been closer for her.

'Oh, hi Father. This is -'

'Ruth Strauss,' said the woman, very quickly.

'Shalom alechem,' said McCutcheon, extending his hand. The woman blinked rapidly, apparently taken by surprise at his unquestioning acceptance of a jew in aCatholic church. 'The description "Catholic" can also apply with a small "c", Ms Strauss. A fifth of our membership is made up of Protestants. In this group we already have three jews - well, one Orthodox, one Liberal and one Marxist-Leninist who's declares himself an atheist. We are united in our resistance to a great evil and denominational differences tend to disappear as a result. Since you are here, Stan and his loyaltly committee have already vetted you. How can I help?'

Ruth Strauss blinked again.

'Ah - well - ah - this is a bit fast for me, really. I sort of expected a long settling-in period.'

Stan laughed silently. The priest glared at him and continued.

'No, sadly we don't have settling-in. Our members have to hit the ground running. Perhaps you would like to ask some questions, find your feet?'

'Oh yeah. What are you doing here?'

'Tonight I'm preparing a release of the pamphlet we send out. It's called "The Light".' The woman's eyes widened at that and she looked impressed. 'I see you know of it already! Yes, I write and print it from here.'

'Wow! I remember when I saw that the first time! That is so cool! What's in it this time?'

McCutcheon cleared his throat in embarassment, not used to the praise.

'Uh, well, this is one dedicated to two Special Agents of the FBI who decided their conscience didn't allow them to carry on in the job as before. There's Special Agent York, who objected to what he had to do on moral grounds; he sent in information to us about government eavesdropping and mail-searching. The other side of the leaflet is for Special Agent XYZ, who hasn't been caught but who gave us information on how the FBI tracks and deals with protest groups like ours, because he felt that all the internal spying the FBI did meant it neglected other duties.'

Ruth nodded to herself at this, seemingly impressed at McCutcheon's testimony.

'And now, Ms Strauss, I have to ask you what you can do for us.'

'No problem. My brother is a mail inspector in Seattle. Last month they got his boyfriend on a morals charge and Steve is hopping mad, ready to do them down in revenge. He wanted some way to get back at them and I said I'd look into it. I know there's the Democratic Labour Group, bu tI didn't know how to contact them, and the Rainbow are too violent. So - here I am.'

McCutcheon visibly perked up. A mail inspector! Things were on the up!

15) A Parting

RSFG

MUNICH

SEPTEMBER

Alex slept only a little. One of his kneecaps hurt again and as a result he lay awake next to Morika until five o'clock. She was quite a surprise package, all things considered, but what she considered him to be - that was less sure. Still, he needed to get back to Room A312 or Olukaside would tannoy him at one minute past seven. With a twinge of conscience Alex left a non-commital note for his paramour and left.

C# for twenty seconds, a tuneful and loud alarm call. Alex groped his way out of bed and got dressed on automatic pilot. This time he stuck the Zap Gun down the elasticated side of his boot. The instant the door opened a cloud of evil-smelling smoke greeted his nostrils, Olukaside's herbal mixture preceding the man himself.

'So here you are. Okay, follow me and I'll brief you.'

'Follow to where?'

'The canteen. I passed my report on to the Iceberg last night. They called me back this morning at ten to six. There appears to be a pattern of sorts emerging.'

Alex felt blank. They picked up ersatz coffee and toast with sliced sausage and sat.

'Not just about this incident, there are others, inexplicable ones that are way out of the normal profile.'

To Alex this sounded rather vague, only faintly threatening. Like thunder in the distance.

16) Hot Air

ICE07

GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

EASTERN MEDITERANNEAN

SEPTEMBER

Officially members aboard ICE07 were on permanent duty and had no leisure time. Of course, human nature being what it is, this nonsense got treated with the derision it deserved and members held a certain portion of their day as time off, remaining nominally on-call.

Now, on the observation deck, an informal discussion took place between UNION assignees around a private viewing booth with the screen left on but the sound reduced in volume. Bibor was there, along with Rossi, Gray and others.

'There is a pattern here, a network -' began Bibor.

'Bull!' snorted Gray. 'That's a nonsense, how could there be!'

'No, I agree with Bibor. There is a connection,' stated Rossi.

'Seriously?'

'Look. The Threat Assessment Package has sorted all this out. There is a connection between those bomb attacks at Red Rock, the American military engineers going berserk, Atom City being attacked.'

'Must be quite a persuasive connection to join the dots on all three of those.'

'Yes. It's our ex-Number Two, Bob Chernovsky. Seen at all three sites.'

'Perhaps. We can't trust the Americans to tell the truth about anything, you know.'

'They didn't report anything, we eavesdropped on them, got the information via FIDO. They don't know that we know that they know.'

'Alright, so Chernovsky is involved. Where does that leave us?'

'So there's the pattern.'

'I still think there's a network.'

'No, can't see it. What pattern is there? No-one gains from an attack on Krasniy Kameniev, no-one at all.'

'Perhaps the Russians would gain from an attack on Atom City.'

'Yeah, and Chernovsky's Russian. Just about proves it, eh? It's a plot by him to take over the whole world.'

'Oh come on! Chernovsky was in UNION before the wheel got invented. How the hell do we know he's gone over -'

'How likely is it?'

'There's no alternative, he must be responsible.'

While his subordinates argued amongst each other to no conclusion, Weiss communed with more high-powered FedCon members. Not in person, only by broadcast. As he saw it, merely one of the interminable meetings he needed to attend to; Bibor ought to be assuming a portion of them but lacked the experience needed, an irksome reminder about the loss of Chernovsky.

Which, by coincidence, happened to be the topic of discussion at the moment.

'How serious is this man's defection?' asked one of the Security Review Commission members. 'I mean, he can be replaced, can't he?'

'Yes. That isn't the crux of the matter. Chernovsky was my Number Two for five years and an assignee for three years before that an inductee before that. In short, he knows UNION inside-out from the bottom upwards. As a result of his presumed defection, capture or interrogation we have been forced to change codes, ciphers and various software packages dealing with security. A long and slow process, I warn you.'

Costly, too, Weiss might have added. Contingency plans for such an eventuality had been laid down years ago but their implementation to date was rather stumbling.

'Can we say, then, that currently measures are being undertaken to resolve the assumed defection of an important UNION member?'

Oh yes, better get the story right before the media got hold of it. A display screen lit up with a unanimous collection of green lights via broadcast; there was a clear consensus between the scattered Committee members. They moved on to the next item on their tele-agenda: Red Rock and Various Security Aspects Associated With It. Weiss reported that a UNION agent had been despatched on the Red Rocket when the extent of the disaster became obvious, hoping to impress his overseers with this, since the launch schedule for Krasniy Rackyeta had been brought forward by a month and discomfited a great many people; tourists, passengers, crew and System Command traffic controllers. With a high-cost, long-burn, rapid transit to Mars there would be an extra billion marks on the balance sheet, but Weiss knew from past experience that when Mars was concerned expense meant little. All nations working in harmony, that kind of back-slapping self-congratulatory stuff, where nobody wanted to play the villain and cut the budget.

As he mentioned, security precluded any transmission from their agent on Mars unless exceptional circumstances warranted it; there were still the American bases on the Moon to consider, their Big Ear satellites and monitoring stations, all of which would eagerly eavesdrop on any Earthbound transmission.

17) Our Man On Mars

RED ROCK GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

MARS

EARTH RELATIVE SEPTEMBER

The Red Rocket wasn't capable of travel in an atmosphere and it couldn't cope with gravity wells, either. This meant that it needed to stand well off in orbit whilst passengers and crew were ferried up from or down to it's planet of call. Despite the name, the vessel that travelled between Mars, the Moon and Earth looked nothing like the conventional streamlined missile so beloved of old. The forward section was a torus with two cross-corridors running along two diameters at right angles to each other; and the juncture of these was a cylindrical body. From the rear of the torus ran another length of corridor, terminating in the power plant, a spherical unit. Passengers and cargo travelled in the torus, crew in the cylinder.

From the departing, Mars-bound shuttle craft, Anderson Lovell could see the interplanetary spaceship in all its shabby grandeur, large enough to be impressive, old enough to be worn, important enough to have a "paint-job" annually. It cost too much to simply be abandoned and the intricate finances to replace it were not yet agreed.

Lovell bore the official title of an MJO investigative officer on assignment to Red Rock. In reality he was a UNION agent-nominee out to do a thorough research job into the sabotage attempts. His brief was to delve into the background, organisation, systems and personalities of the Martian base, in addition to the explosive sabotage.

'Attention please, attention please,' said a hidden speaker, which then repeated the phrase in seven languages, of which Lovell recognised only French and German.

'We are about to enter the Martian atmosphere. For your safety please lock you retaining stanchion in place. Those of you with window seats -' all six passengers in fact '- may look down as we begin our descent. You will see the stunning Martian landscape, marvel at exotic hues and colours and thrill to the many marvellous sights.'

Lovell began to wonder at the attitude of the pilot, coming over sarcastic like that. He peered out of his window, looking at the light side of the demarcator, as the surface expanded away in all directions, Red Rock becoming faintly visible. Clusters of domes, stellate interconnecting walkways, submerged corridors. A large block of lights blinking rhythmically with the phi effect showed where shuttles landed. Near to that, too near in the opinion of Lovell, were the swelling tops of liquid fuel tanks. As they dropped lower still, more details became visible, like the lights shining from semi-polarised windows.

All anti-climactic. Millions of miles from Earth with just this to travel to. Even if most of Red Rock was buried underground there seemed precious little to show for the trillions invested there. So much of gross national product world-wide had been poured into Red Rock that it was said war had been rendered impossible for decades afterwards, due to fiscal depletion.

The shuttle grounded with a thump.

'Okay, here we are. Welcome to Mars. Enjoy your stay because once we leave, that's it, you're stuck here.'

The speaker sounded bored. Understandable really, after their tedious journey across the depths of interstellar space, a process what had no romance to it so far as Lovell could see. Everything aboard the ship was carried out by computer with the crew acting in a supervisory role, intervening only rarely when things went wrong. The entire passage was a far cry from the wonderful special effects "hyperspace" trips taken by space travellers in films.

Releasing his retaining stanchion, Lovell straightened up, hearing his knees crack loudly. A stewardess, face carefully rendered symmetrical by surgery, stalked down the aisle, smiling broadly at each passenger. She ferried them all to the egress port and outside.

Lovell took his first step onto the soil of an alien world and found it hard and unyielding - because he stood on plastic flooring rather than Martian ground. The flooring was past of a corridor, very brightly lit and glaring white. Another anticlimax for Lovell, who discovered that a corridor on Mars looked much like a corridor anywhere else.

A dark-skinned man, possibly Indochinese, waited at the entry gate for arrivals from Earth in order to greet them personally. He shook hands with them all while they crossed the light barrier and underwent sterilisation. It may have been the Antiguan's imagination, but he thought that the man shook his hand with unusual force.

The man, Bhatacharjee by name and Indian by origin, explained that one of the hardest things to come to terms with about Mars was the sheer ordinariness of the indoors environment. As Lovell had already experienced, an enclosed room felt and looked like an enclosed room anywhere with only the perceived change in body weight to remind one of just where you were - and the mind and body soon adjusted to the difference in weight.


	16. Chapter 16

18) Crocodile Tears

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

AUSTIN

TEXAS

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In order to present the common touch, Senator McClusky had been moved into the Eisenhower Memorial Hospital. The media were informed about his tenure in FedCon Wing ("for obvious reasons details about the ward cannot be disclosed"), but were not told that in fact Room 616 was a private suite, attended by a private doctor, two private nurses, guarded by a rota of two officers from the Lone Star Guard, catered by McClusky's own personal chef and bugged by the FBI. Latter point unknown but suspected by the ever suspicious senator. The common touch was strictly for public consumption; McClusky actually held sway in a one-room domain where he ruled as best he could, injuries allowing.

Those injuries were relatively minor if one considered that the senator had been shot; broken ribs, extensive bruising, a fractured cheekbone where he'd hit the steps. Cheyne probably considered himself less fortunate, since he was dead, having been hit above the right eye by a bullet and killed instantly. Cordman and Stone escaped unscathed, as did the mystery assassin.

It was all a construction, of course, carefully planned by Cordman to divert, placate, stall and halt an Ethics Committee investigation of his superior. Four earlier investigations of McClusky came to naught, abruptly halted when Committee members discovered themselves mysteriously targeted by assassins, blackmailers, IRS, or simply disappeared outright. Nothing came back to McClusky, or his people, but the message was clear - if you investigated him, your life and career were both in danger.

However, Senator Orde was a persistent and determined opponent with a formidable bloc behind him. They prevailed upon the President to order the direction of the Ethics Committee's spotlight upon McClusky for a fifth time, following that Senator's recruitment of an infiltrating "weak link". This weak link, one Ralph Quillan by name, worked for Orde. His brief was to obtain dirt on McClusky by any means possible and effectively this meant involvement in what were called "paralegal" activities of McClusky's office. Many senators indulged in such business, since they needed to raise capital in large amounts for patronage, promotions, exclusions and all the unofficial debits involved in senatorial work. Voluntary contributions had dried up long ago under the detested State of Emergency and the insularity it ushered in. Mad Jack needed more income than most, since he was the sponsor of the Lone Star Guard to the tune of ten million dollars per year. His main paralegal prop consisted of large-scale importation of drugs from across the Mexican border (sweet irony). How did McClusky rationalise his drug-running activities? To answer that one would need to understand the mental processes of the man, and no-one did. The government agencies looked on drug-smuggling with ambivalent eyes; yes it was illegal, yes, it funded organised crime, but it also kept the inner cities quieter and more docile and lessened the number of anti-Emergency riots. Other senators carried out their own, equally schizophrenic schemes: Murdoch owned a string of Californian porn parlours (illegal since he came from Nevada), Wisbech had false holding companies trading with FedCon states, even the President, it was rumoured, has a dark, secret operation funding him.

The mystery assassin was Arnold Pressman, a member of Mad Jack's personal entourage, a man Cordman could trust for the job. When Pressman turned up at the pre-arranged rendezvous for payment, Sergeant Stone gave him a surprise present instead, a short burst of gunfire to the head. This apparently motiveless slaying went hand in glove with the assassination attempt on Mad Jack. Expertly manipulated by Dave Cordman, the press and television were able to get bedside footage and coverage of Senator Jack McClusky recovering from surgery. The injured man's brave responses came from careful rehearsal and an autocue.

'Who shot me? Damned if I know, gentlemen. I surely wish I did, then I could return the favour.'

'Have I any ideas about their identity? Well, they sure as hell weren't from the IRS, were they! That was a joke, if the IRS get to hear it. Play safe with those guys, eh?

'Dick Cheyne? Yeah, they told me. Arnie Pressman? No, that I didn't know. Jesus Mary and Joseph, what is this, open season on my staff? Do the rest of them have protection?'

Shortly after the above conversation was broadcast on prime-time national television Senator Orde put a call through to the Ethics Committee chair, even if such an action could bring severe penalties. Whatever the Senator heard didn't please him at all, because he threw his handset brutally at the wall.

Later that same day a known homosexual senatorial aide was found beaten to death in a Nevada hotel room. Also dead in the same room, a needle of pure heroin still stuck in a vein, was a comedian well-known in Chicago.

19) North of Transplutonia

BADFORT TOWERS

LONDON

OCTOBER

Alex returned to his apartment from Germany, feeling vaguely depressed that he and Olukaside were now removed from the Lothar-Theo case. Olukaside considerately warned him about this phenomenon; possibly the most annoying thing about working for UNION was not being able to follow a case to conclusion, since national agencies of member states within FedCon tended to intervene and take over. After that, need-to-know kept matters cloaked in secrecy and it took patience, time and influence to find out what happened in the end, if everyone lived happily ever after, and for most work it simply wasn't worth the time to investigate.

Once he opened the apartment door Alex knew there had been a change. When he entered the living room he discovered just what; his telescope had gone. Nor was the computer sitting on his desk the same one he had left sitting there; instead it was a newer, more expensive model, doubtless minus Alex's painstakingly acquired chess games. UNION action.

Shit, thought the Serb, dropping into a comfortable chair. Thanks for asking me about that, UNION. Another wonderful aspect of the job, one that really brought home the fact that he worked as a spy in an organisation of spies. Picking up a remote handset he recalled the incoming message-dump on his phone. Nothing of interest there, so he went to make a cup of tea, hoping that his much-prized Min hadn't gone the way of telescope and computer. What he needed was company, and also milk.

There lay the rub. Since this was a secure dwelling you couldn't simply invite friends up on a whim. And - Alex lived kilometres out in the suburbs. He'd have to go to company rather than have it come to him.

His ankle hurt, so he rubbed it mindlessly for a few minutes, where the Zap Gun pressed into it ever since Customs had reluctantly returned it to him at Dover. He threw the weapon onto the three-seater and turned on the wall viewer.

Newschannel appeared, giving an economics review of the past quarter that scrolled upwards with lots of charts and diagrams, complete with pauses for hard copy offtakes. Alex frowned and killed the sound, remembering his days of practicing formal English by listening to Newschannel and the received pronunciation of its staff.

Aha! He thought, remembered his mail box, unemptied since he walked in. When he checked there was only one item, a message disk without a label (but a mysterious writer had scribbled "Play me!" on it).

'Good day, citizen,' said an animated face when the disk got played. The androgynous, anonymous, flawless and perfectly symmetrical face must be an animation, surely? Nor was Alex Petrovic a citizen of anywhere whilst he served in FedCon, so the disk had that wrong from the start. 'You have been specially selected for a mission, due to your special qualifications -'

Oh yes? pondered Alex with not a little suspicion, and what qualifications might those be?

'- for detailed hard copy please press F1, thank you. Remember that this is also a one-shot erase-as-it-plays disk and what you have heard will be gone forever. Good luck.'

Pressing F1 brought reams of print rolling out of the unit.

They must want me to complete an encyclopaedia … He read on. No, they wanted him to go to Moldavia.

'Moldavia!' guffawed Neil, almost blowing beer down his nose. 'Also known as the armpit of Europe.'

As far as Neil and Eric knew, Alex now worked as a relief officer of the MJO and had been required to travel abroad. Privately Neil doubted this cover, but when he started to question his friend a little more deeply, the Serb's eyes narrowed slightly, even if the smile remained. Neil, untypically, took the hint and stopped asking.

'It is supposed to be a little er, backward, out there, yes,' added Eric. '"Under-resourced" is the current phrase.'

Alex popped another can of beer.

'I have to check institutions dealing with orphaned children. Orphans. Children. Christ Risen, what I don't know about stray kids would fill volumes. I'm not married - despite Mama's best attempts - so I know nothing about children.'

The sound of "Mama" set Neil off again, since the word seemed so incongruous. Eric stared at each of them in turn, a little bewildered. Then he shrugged and took anther sip of beer.

Alex had earlier decided to abandon his apartment for the evening. It felt like a prison cell, designed to keep him in as much as keeping others out; you couldn't invite people around without an appointment and it didn't keep unwelcome visitors like UNION out.

'When do you leave?'

'Not straight away. If I leave on the shuttle to Belgrade I can see my family en route for a couple of hour, so I'm going late tomorrow on that. It'll be a surpise.'

'A what?'

'Surprise. I meant surprise. Shit, this beer is strong.'

Neil counted a dozen empty beer cans on the flooring, so inebria stalking amongst them wasn't unexpected. Eric decided to tune into the Adult Channel, which he did successfully via the remote, but he then dropped the device on the floor, where it bounced heavily and lay still. Neil swore heartily, Eric looking guiltily at him.

'Dickhead. You've set the anti-theft chip off now. We can't change channels now.' He explained to Alex that the set, second hand, came cheap because the remote, if handled roughly, would set the television working at full volume on the last channel selected for at least an hour. An anti-theft function.

'Look what's on! Blaster Squad. This is all your fault, Eric.'

Alex looked alternately morose then annoyed. "Blaster Squad" was a British home-grown entertainment, one of the ultra-violent cop shows that outlived their progenitors across the Atlantic; still enormously popular on this side. Nominally the programme in question lasted for thirty minutes of which the introduction and closing credits took up three minutes, adverts another three minutes, plot, characterisations, segues and landscapes took another four minutes. The remaining twenty minutes consisted of gunfire, killing, explosions and sudden death with a myriad variations every week. Alex detested the programme almost as much as "Pander'. To avoid watching it he borrowed a large towel from the kitchen and draped it over the screen.

Eventually their conversation trickled to an end under a combination of fatigue and alcohol. Pleading tiredness, Alex got to crash out in the living room, under an old quilt that Neil dug out from a deep chest. It felt strange to fall asleep in an unfamiliar room in the dark, under a slightly musty blanket.

To the later torment of Alex, his dream came as a minutely detailed reconstruction of one day as "La Loco Motiva" near Nuevo Laredo, less a dream than a video replay, exact in all details. Alex playing the part of a mysterious fourth-wall camera.

This time there were no other volunteers in the market square at dawn, just Alex and a battered Volvo 6 by 10, with incongruously bright patches over bullet-holes in the bodywork. The vehicle, named "La Loca", possessed a legendary ability to keep going under any circumstances; rain, mud, bullets, mist, bombs or plain bad driving meant nothing to it, despite (or even because) the self-guidance unit being a jury-rigged relic, a decade older than the truck.

Alex ambled over to a stall, where the holder was setting up, and bought a small melon for breakfast. Raw and sweet, it made his mouth pucker, even in the dream. It had to be a dream because there didn't seem to be any colour in the world.

'Hi and good morning to you. Can't you sleep?'

It was Lanfranc, a Canadian responsible for the FedCon administration in Camp Two. Because of his nationality and accent he had been treated with considerable distrust and dislike by the refugees, until his unstinting hard work and self-effacing nature won them over. Still, he must be a brave man, daring to work along a border where his accent, skin and way of speaking might mean being mistaken for an American and murdered. Alex felt respect rather than like for the man, but he was sincere about what he did, to the point of taking supplies when drivers were in short supply.

'No. Once I awaken up I do not be getting back to sleep again. What are you being doing at this time?' Back then his English had been a bit erratic.

'I'm looking for volunteers. And do you know, I just found one.'

This oblique reference didn't apply to Alex. A new arrival had come to replace Sienkiewicz (last heard of departing west with a stolen truck, a stolen gun and an under-age Mexican girl). Eager to please, this arriviste promptly volunteered to do driving duty, unaware of what it involved. Lanfranc had come hunting an experienced driver who would either dissuade or adopt their new assistant.

'Who are they, this new person?'

'An Irish guy called McDonaghy. Young, enthusiastic, cheerful -'

'Already I hate him,' complained Alex, only half joking, since he felt old, resigned and glum. Sudden embarrassment: the Irishman appeared from nowhere, out of thin air in very dreamlike fashion.

'Aha. How are you, Mack Don Agee?' asked Alex, not only embarrassed but unsure of how to pronounce this Celtic interloper's name.

'I'm fine, thanks. How's yourself, Mister -'

'Petrovic, pronounced with a "vich". Just call me Alex, it is easier. I hope you are all ready'

'Ready? Ready for what?'

Lanfranc put a paternal arm around McDonaghy's shoulder.

'More of that later. Alex, will you come over to my office?'

All three trekked over to Lanfranc's office, a small adobe-plastered demesne filled with elderly furniture old enough to fetch a fortune in any European antiques shop. Newly installed screens, printers and interfaces were starkly out of place in this setting, which could have come from a century ago. A large bar chart on one cluttered wall showed the current condition of various aspects of Camp Two: Supplies, Edible: Violet. Supplies, Non-Edible: Blue. Water: Blue. Transport, Rail: OUT; Air: OUT; Road: Red. Due to the American rolling sabotage programme the transport of supplies by road was difficult, impossible by rail and suicidal by air.

'Good news or bad news first? Okay, good it is. The Lone Star Guard are sending an honour guard to Dallas for a civic parade of some sort. That's a thousand or so less to worry about.'

'And the bad news?' prompted Alex. 'There is always bad news.' Not that it seemed the sort of thing he'd actually said, perhaps that meant he was dreaming.

''There always is bad news. As you know, that idiot from Manchester crashed the water tanker en route to Camp Three. We couldn't salvage it and the Lone Stars used it for target practice last night, so all that's left of it are two axles and a transmission shaft.'

'That's very interesting. And?'

'Camp Two is short of water. Short of food but shorter on water. We are going to load up La Loca with water blivets and run a mercy mission to our thirsty neighbours.'

McDonaghy visibly beamed, eager to make the run between camps instantly if that were possible. Alex and Lanfranc became aware of their novice's dash when they were all three loading ten-litre water blivets into the Volvo. The Irishman thumped the side of the cargo compartment with a meaty fist.

'Is this armour-plated?' he asked. 'Only I noticed the springs are low on it's suspension.'

Alex laughed out loud with grim, veteran amusement.

'No, no. Armour plating? I am afraid not! This is just sheet metal and the springs are low because the suspension is -how is it?'

'Screwed?' suggested Lanfranc, not seeing anything humorous.

'Exactly, yes, the suspension is screwed. We get a very bumpy ride in La Loca but she is fast. Armour plates would slow her down too much.'

'Couldn't you have just a little armour plate?'

Alex scowled.

'What do you think that this is the army! Christ Risen, we drive fast to miss the bullets, not slow to let them hit us.'

By now a few refugees with nothing else to do had gathered in the market square, watching the truck being loaded and the three strangers loading it. Alex went through a test of the vehicle, going so far as to run the engine for ten minutes. McDonaghy was appalled by the noise and smoke produced during the warm-up, to the amusement of Alex, who considered this morning's test to be quieter than usual.

Before allowing McDonaghy in to the cab, Alex stressed a few ground rules. One, do as you're told. Two, always keep moving. Three, if you're stopped for any reason at all, get out of the cab on the side opposite the Americans. Four, if you got out of the cab then take cover behind the road camber and keep crawling towards the nearest camp. There were all sorts of tales of people who didn't follow those rules and died from neglect.

Camp Two slowly came to life when Lanfranc stopped the loading and gave Alex a roster greenscreen to sign, a release form that said he departed freely and without duress, knowing the dangers the situation involved. McDonaghy signed too. The pair climbed up into the cab, Alex patting the St Christopher's medal Mama had sent him and which hung from the rear-view mirror. The Irishman looked curiously at his partner, then muttered a benediction and touched the medal himself. After all, he told himself, what harm can it do - a little good luck never goes amiss. There were other good luck charms, too - a crucifix wired to the radiator, a sprig of heather stapled to the back of the driver's seat, other medals that Mrs Petrovic had sent nestling in the glove compartment, the good wishes of Camp Two and "their" driver.

Lanfranc tapped on the driver's door. Alex rolled the window down.

'Which route are you taking? Any idea?'

Alex shrugged his shoulders. He considered it to be bad luck to decide or make a choice in advance, based on his past experience, and he was still in one piece.

Still warm from the test run, the Volvo's engine started first time, ticking over with an impressive rumble. Alex selected manual for the gears, then pulled his safety cradle down.

'Web in, we are going off.'

The trick was not to raise dust. Therefore, no harsh acceleration or wheel-spinning take off. Instead, a steady calm acceleration up to ninety.

'This is the easy part,' yelled Alex over the engine thunder. Almost straight away they left the metalled surface of the exit road and hit the track that now ran to Camp Three. McDonaghy stared in surprise at the potholed track that he knew to be a metalled road, on the maps at least. What he didn't know was that the contractors refused to risk American cross-border shooting in order to build the road, an omission that the cartographers, sadly, didn't know about. The track made for a punishing ride even with good suspension. For a weary old trouper like La Loca and anyone inside the journey felt much worse.

'Oof!' said McDonaghy. 'I hope it's not all like this.'

Only where it got worse was it any different. The driver didn't wish to waste his breath on redundant facts so he waited, thinking that time would tell, even if this happened to be dream. And, dreamlike, they were suddenly ten kilometres from Camp Two, the ridge that shielded them from American eyes gradually decreasing in height, letting the northern bank of the Rio Bravo come into view. This portion of track constituted the first dangerous stretch, where hostile observers could see any movement on the track from there onwards. The truck would remain in plain sight until they reached the Shooting Gallery. At that point the track divided in two, the better surfaced part leading up a small hill, the cruder path travelling behind the hill. It would have been an appropriate time to explain this if the Lone Star Guard had not intervened with their customary venom and vigour. An inverted cone of earth with a brief bright flash at its base leapt into the air, twenty metres ahead and just off the road edge.

'ARTILLERY!' yelled Alex, suddenly panicky. He braked sharply, his leg seeming to take an age to depress the pedal, then he dropped down a gear to accelerate better, weaving across the whole of the road while doing so.

One after the other, three explosions scarred the road behind the truck, the last being close enough for bits of dirt to rattle on their cab roof. Alex braked again, dropped two gears, then accelerated and braked in swift succession, using engine braking too. His passenger looked grimly ahead with one hand clutching the safety cradle and the other locked onto a door handle.

Another explosion, off towards the river bank, followed by another on the opposite side of the road, threw up more smoke and gravel. BANG! Went the off-side fender, causing McDonaghy to jump in fright and nearly leap out of the cab, but the collision was only with the remains of a burnt-out truck. Unable to see properly, Alex had clipped the rusty wreck in his haste.

Now came the worst part: The Shooting Gallery. Alex didn't let the fear surface to where it might become a threat, but he still worried enough for the two of them. He didn't take the turn-off, just carried on up the hill road, still erratically stamping the accelerator. Variation and inconsistency, that's what you needed to avoid being ranged by American predictor gunsights (craftsman constructed in Southern California).

With genuine dreamlike, aching slowness they crested the hill. Ahead a thin, smokey meander rose from an obliterated truck further down the track, the water-carrier carcass. Strangely, they were not under fire now; perhaps their tormentors had become bored, or run low on ammunition?

No! shouted Alex to himself as a mortar bomb, a nasty black-finned thing, plopped savagely into the track ahead. And stayed there, dud. Did this take place when he drove with McDonaghy the first time or could this be a dream?

Time didn't allow any manoeuvres. Having a high ground clearance, the Volvo thundered directly over the dormant projectile as the driver straightened his leg to get maximum leverage on the accelerator. If the bomb was a dud then it probably wouldn't go off and if it had a delay or trembler then the only escape was to outrun it.

It must have been faulty, decided Alex, because I'm still here thinking about it.

More express deliveries were fully functional and bracketed the track on both sides, so Alex left it for a short stretch, hammering the suspension further and punishing both occupants into the bargain. Then it was back onto the track with a sudden hush making their ears ring hollowly, a sign of blast pressure effects and an indirect warning about how close they came to being killed. Alex jinked once or twice before reaching the hill's downward sloped where the road zigzagged in slow, lazy bends.

'God Almighty!' yelled McDonaghy as they raced straight off the road, in an approximately straight line for the point, much further ahead, where the road became less wandering. He seemed more scared of his partner's driving than of the American ordnance.

A percussive crack made La Loca quiver momentarily and for a bleak second Alex thought a structural member had failed, until they reached the Gallery's end, by which time he realised that if there was a problem with the truck then it wasn't terminal.

On this stretch he kept their speed high, varying between eighty to a hundred and twenty. Better traction kicked this up by another five until La Loca suddenly skidded into the outskirts of Camp Three, it's croupy klaxon blaring in deserved triumph. Driving past the slums brought a sense of contradictory relief and grief to Alex, mingled in a way difficult to disentangle or explain, made worse by the irrationality of the dream.

When they rolled to a halt McDonaghy let out a painfully constrained sigh of relief, long held in suspense. Both driver and passenger jumped down from the cab without a word, McDonaghy feeling his knees give unexpectedly as he jumped down from the running board, but Alex, long experienced at such missions and feelings, stayed upright; his stomach was a clenched knot and there he had cramp in both shoulders, but he stayed upright.

Swarms of thirsty 'Canos came to collect water blivets handed out by supervisors from La Loca's read loading ramp. Alex noticed a small hole low down on the cargo compartment's nearside; he went around to the off-side and saw a much larger hole, edges splayed out in jagged flanges. Still curious, he peered into the rear, past a lone supervisor smoking a lone cigarillo. Yes, the two holes were opposite each other; a handful of empty water blivets lay on the floor in a puddle.

'You were lucky, man. The Virgin likes you, Mister Loco,' drawled the supervisor.

Alex nodded slowly. From the look of it, a Mexican soldier told him, an armour-piercing cannon shell had gone straight through the truck body; perhaps a tenth of a second sooner and it would have gone through the driver's cab and the driver.

'Thank God that's over,' exclaimed the Irishman. 'Your driving scares me - what?'

'It is not over. We have to go back. They need this truck at Camp Two.'

The dream faded into darkness.

POLICY STATEMENT

DRAFT 3

SECTION 3:2

1) When in transit it is established practice that FedCon employees will travel at the Most Economic Rate on the most economic mode of transport.

2) Due to existing transportation schedules, it will normally be expedient for FedCon employees to travel on previously organised FedCon transport.

3) Under exceptional circumstances it will become necessary for special arrangements to be made for the transport of personnel; wherever possible, FedCon transport will be utilised.

4) If during 2) above, it is not possible to procure FedCon transport then suitable, appropriate and alternative transport will be chartered from other sources (see Appendix 17 for list of Approved Sources)

There were no special flights this time for Alex, no, it was back to a more mundane level of operation and it showed. From London to Yugoslavia, he certainly didn't feel like driving the Khan all that way, then on to Moldavia, then returning again.

After checking through TACT he discovered a four vehicle convoy due to leave from London, bound for Kosovo with thirty tonnes of mixed white goods. Time was short, though. He had to get from Neil's home back to his own, sort out travelling arrangements and gear, get down to the appropriate vehicle park in South London and park before the convoy left - assuming that they would take him without quibbling.

'Morning. Coffee?' asked Neil, suddenly appearing from upstairs, clad in a remarkable garment that looked like exotic wrapping paper.

'Yes please. Black -'

'- with two sugars, yes, I know you by now.'

'You look like a Christmas present come early.'

Neil shouted in reply from the kitchen.

'It's a heater gown. You know, from the space-suit liners. It keeps you warm when the batteries are switched on..' He reappeared with two cups. 'Neat, HM? Saves turning on the central heating.'

Alex nodded. One of the less profound FedCon spin-offs that continually popped up as consumer products. Such as his prized German knife collection; mono-molecular lined blades, derived from German micro-engineering research.

The coffee burnt his tongue, which made him pay attention to the here and now. He finished the drink, then left, politely but rapidly.

He made it to, of all places, South London Sorting Office for the rendezvous with the trucks before they left, arriving by taxi. Expensive and necessary. He suffered a brief argument with the driver before he got a receipt, since he wanted to try and claim the cost as a legitimate travelling expense, all the while thinking that a secret spy never had to suffer such banal indignities in films.

There were now four trucks travelling to Kosovo, making eight drivers who had got together in a huddle to discuss matters. When they say their additional charge the discussion stopped and one driver greeted him.

'Hello! Are you this Russian fella? Going to Belgrave?'

'Yes. I am Serbian, actually.'

'Yeah, from Serbiria, right!'

The driver turned to his fellow truckers and announced "The Russian's arrived". Try as he might, Alex was never able to explain to them convincingly that Serbia was not a part of Russia. Memories were short in London, it seemed. Still, they were friendly enough and stowed his cases away in the blink of an eye.

Being a passenger, it was bad form to speak to the driver unless he talked to you first, so there were long periods of silence, since the relief driver slept whilst his comrade drove. Thus they passed rapidly through France, into Switzerland, then Italy and to the Yugoslav border with Slovenia. Rapid and efficient, the two-driver system, even if it meant little in the way of conversation. Pit stops were infrequent, limited to calls of nature, refuelling, food restocks and border checks. Alex came into his own when they drew up in the customs lane of the Yugoslav border post, each truck halted with motors stopped.

An officious patrolman in blue-gray uniform strolled up an alongside the lead vehicle, carrying a white baton tucked under one arm. He stopped, took the baton and used it to push the peaked cap back a little on his head; this appeared to be customs-official body language for "I am going to inspect you"

'Bloody hell. This one's going to be difficult. I can tell, you know, and the run's been dead easy so far,' grumbled the driver, a Cockney called Pete. He powered the window down.

'You are English, yes?'

'Yeah. English.'

'I am customs officer from Border Customs Inspectorate for this region. I am wanting to see your vehicle, also your papers.' He tapped the radiator grille with his baton. 'I am also meaning this thing. Car - wagon -' He swore briefly in Serbian, unhappy at having to converse in English.

'Hey, mate, no need to swear. What's the problem?' enquired Alex cheerfully in his mother tongue, to the considerable surprise and relief of the customs officer.

'Who are you - no, never mind, I won't ask. Look, what's going on here; all of a sudden four British trucks turn up out of nowhere. I'm curious.'

Alex shrugged.

'We're from FedCon, going all the way to beautiful Beogradska, that's all. We're carrying general office supplies. Terminals, cabling, interfaces, hard cards, that sort of stuff.'

The other cocked his head to one side quizzically.

'Well, I don't know. Oh, sod it, you've got an honest face and it's lunch time.' He switched back to English. 'Okay, you okay, go now.'

Pete expressed his surprise and satisfaction. Clever lad, coming from Russia and able to speak Yugoslav! If only he knew. Alex had spent every waking minute ever since his assignment came through, learning Romanian. He now possessed a limited vocabulary, some idiom and a good accent.

Since his last visit home there had been considerable rebuilding and reconstruction work in Belgrade, a lot of the ugly Revisionist architecture going under the demolition ball, to the extent that he failed to recognise certain districts that they passed through.

Ah, beautiful Beogradska, your least favourite son is back, he said to himself, also aloud in English.

Pete looked at him curiously.

'You lived here?'

'For eighteen years. Aha, look, there's the television tower. At least that's not changed. Look, could you drop me near the central bus terminal?'

Luckily the roads leading to the station had not changed overmuch and the expatriate was able to find his way there easily enough, guiding the trucks. Pete dropped him off, plus baggage, with a cheery wave, and each truck gave a loud blast on its horn as it rolled past.

'Take care, mate, you're a long way from home!' was Pete's parting line.

Alex could tell he was back in his homeland by the difference in people's attitudes; by now he had gotten used to the politeness and rule-following of the English, though the islanders didn't see themselves that way. Serbs and Belgradians by contrast were rude. Perhaps if he'd spoken English to them, they would have been politer.

'I'm busy. Get lost,' snapped the first bus driver he dared to approach.

'I screwed your wife last night,' riposted Alex tartly, getting into the swing of things straight away. The bus driver glared ferociously but couldn't leave his cab, busy taking fares from passengers. Eventually Alex found an information kiosk staffed by a surly attendant, who grudgingly let him have a bus timetable. Locating the correct bus wasn't easy; you had to take day, time, holiday, location and availability into account before going to the correct gate.

If this was Holland or England the info would all be on a voice-activated display board. Shit, we can put men on Mars but public transport is too difficult. Shit again, if this were England the bus would go on time and not pull out just as you got to the stand …

He interrupted his internal fuming to consult the timetable and caught the next bus, forty minutes later. It took over an hour to reach his family's housing project since the bus wandered over a meandering route. A few children threw stones when the passed into the Voivode estate. Eventually they reached the Trajanov project, a series of huge curving housing blocks. They were looking rather shabby, pondered Alex. No paint since last time I visited, in fact.

Paint might have been lacking but the symmetrically-laid flower beds were immaculately maintained, doubtless by the project's Flower and Plant committee (which seemed to consist of all the elderly residents).

The Petrovic flat was on Floor Three, low enough to avoid problems with stairs or lifts, high enough to avoid problems from vandals.

As usual, the lift didn't work. It hadn't worked the last time he came home, either. In fact there seemed to be a rule, in any country, that whenever a public housing project existed with stairs or lifts the lifts would be broken and the stairs would be awkward.

A middle-aged man wearing an equally aged homburg was descending the stairs while Alex ascended. They passed on a landing and nodded before moving on.

Just a minute, I know him, realised Alex.

The other stopped in mild astonishment and looked upward from the flight below.

'What? Do I know you?' Then he squinted. 'A minute, a minute. Ah! It's Mrs Petrovic's son, isn't it - Alexander. Well, well, home again, young voyager. Give my regards to your mother. Goodbye.' Off he went, at a nervous pace, remembering who Alexander worked for.

Alex walked along Floor Three to apartment Eighteen. His stomach flipped over briefly before he pressed the bell. It had been a long time since his last visit, which made for a little reflective nervousness.

The door swung open and a small, grey-haired woman with glasses and a worn face stood there.

'Mama!' shouted Alex, dropping his cases and giving her an arm-wrapping hug, kissing her on both cheeks. She gasped as he squeezed the air out of her lungs.

'Alexander Dragan! Oof, put me down, you don't know your own strength. When did you arrive in the city? Are you staying? You should have called to tell me you were coming. Why didn't you call from the airport?'

Throwing up his hands to fend off this barrage of questions, Alex managed to get into the apartment. His mother led him into the kitchen. Kitchen and dining room combined, really, the largest single room of the whole apartment. Branko used to make his models there, Katerina still did her homework on the table, Zdanko played card games at the weekend with friends from the AeroFabrik (though he made sure the slivovitz and cigarette butts were gone by morning).

Zdanko sat at the table now, eating a pastry and drinking some coffee.

'Hello there,' said Alex politely. He and elder brother didn't get on, hadn't done so for a decade. Zdanko nodded politely in reply, carrying on eating and drinking.

'You wait here, Alexander, Ante is upstairs, I'll go and get him for you.'

Alex sat down at the table. Much to his surprise Zdanko poured him a cup of ersatz coffee instead of ignoring him.

'Ta - I mean, thanks. Are you still living here? I heard you'd moved out.'

That earned him a scowl.

'Cheeky little bugger! Yes, I have moved out but I come here for lunch from the AeroFabrik. If Mama needs any odd jobs doing then I help her.'

Alex waved the barbed riposte away, took a sip of coffee and looked around as another person bounded into the room.

'Hello stranger! You're looking old!' That was Ante, making his usual abrupt entrance. The two brothers shook hands and embraced.

'You watch your mouth, Ante Milos,' said their mother, hitting him smartly on the back of the head.

'Ow! Pack it in, Mum, it's just a joke, he can take it. Hey, how long are you staying - are you on leave from FedCon?'

'No, I can't stay long. I'm on assignment to Moldavia so this is only a flying visit. I have to catch a shuttle flight out of Belgrade to get there. Hey, just a minute, what do you mean, "old"? Twenty eight's not old!'

'It comes to us all,' commented Zdanko, drily.

'How's college going for you. No compulsory conscription yet, I hope.'

A pained silence fell for a second or so. Even now, over a decade after a bitterly reluctant Alexander entered the army, the subject could still raise hackles.

'Er, they can defer it for three years, now,' mumbled Ante. Mama saved the day by providing a plate of honey biscuits, which she knew Alex dearly liked and couldn't find in London.

Ante ran like a fountain with a constant stream of questions about life in England. Partly this was due to their long separation, partly due to the younger Petrovic's boundless curiosity, partly due to Alex's reluctance to go into detail about his host country. Zdanko waited until Mama left to do some unavoidable chores upstairs, amongst which was probably making Ante's bed, then he leaned over and hissed at Alex.

'Don't go filling his head with bloody rubbish about how wonderful your job it, you stupid ass. You had enough trouble when you joined the Concordat, didn't you? Well, didn't you!'

True. Alex found the hard way that, once you had worked for the FedCon, it was difficult to obtain employment outside it, owing to the innate suspicion of employers and governments in respect of potential loyalty.

Ante put his view forward.

'I don't want to join up. Not yet, anyway. And I want to get onto the Applied Biophysics course at the university, so I'd never join up until after that.'

His elder brothers harrumphed at him in chorus.

Unfortunately Katerina was at college and wouldn't be home in time to see Alex before he left; Branko was still at work and wouldn't be home until at least six, so Mama brought Alex up to date with information about his brother and sister.

Come time to leave, Mama left to get a bottle of vodka from the freezer, jogging her son's memory - he had several presents brought all the way from England, which he might otherwise have forgotten to unpack. There was a copy of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" in English for Katerina, a black plastic construction kit of the MoonDog for Branko, a Welsh lace shawl for Mama, a state-of-the-art Swiss calculator for Ante ("too cool!"), a bag of best Dutch rolling tobacco for Zdanko. Alex also broke the news about future royalties from his sole publication: there wouldn't be any more since (white lie) FedCon had decided that it had been naughty of him to keep money from a pre-Contract source without having declared it in full. So, no more monies. To sweeten the pill he promised to try and be home for Christmas, although he couldn't guarantee that because he might end up doing emergency cover.

Zdanko saw him out of the flat, to the landing of Floor Three, Alex expecting a critical shaft upon departure.

'Watch yourself in Belgrade. They called out the army to keep the streets controlled and some of them are still there, so be careful. They're mostly in the centre.'

An embarrassed pause fell, as if the sentence hadn't finished yet.

'Look, I know we've never got on, Big Brother acting the father and all that, but until last year no-one mentioned the royalties to me. Mama never told me.'

Alex looked curiously at his older brother.

'How d'you think she could afford the apartment and still send Katerina and Ante to college?'

The other shrugged.

'I thought it was Dad's pension. I was wrong. Look, what I'm trying to say - I'm not doing this too well - I'm grateful for what you did, I thought you'd just disappeared abroad to have a good time and forget about the family. Shake.'

For the first time Alex could remember, they shook hands. A strange feeling, reconciliation with his brother. Not unwelcome, but definitely strange and it stuck in his mind on the bus back into Belgrade.

As recounted, there were army units out on the streets, clustered especially at street corners with plastic shields and shock sticks, loitering with casual, bored attitudes, still looking for student rowdies to baton. Nevertheless, everyday affairs still seemed to be rolling along much as usual; there was even a gypsy band playing outside the central bus station as there had been every other time when Alex visited Belgrade. Accordion, violins, double bass and a guitar; an opened violin case lay in front of them filled with dinars of every denomination. Since he had to pass by them to get on the airport bus Alex threw them all the loose change he had - he didn't want to take any Yugoslav currency into Moldavia. A violinist bowed to him and the band inserted a flurry of chords into their song as a thank you.

Because the airport bus would be seen by international travellers at the terminal it was a well-maintained air-cushion vehicle, all polished chrome and immaculate mock-leather upholstery, quite a difference from the tired workhorse that plied the Trajanov estate. The stewardess who warmly but insincerely greeted each passenger lacked the symmetrical surgery that was so beloved of major service enterprises in Western Europe. Good. A human touch.

The bus waited for quarter of an hour after its departure time to allow any laggards to arrive, because those using it to travel to the airport were likely to be foreigners, tourists, businessmen and the like, all with lots of nice foreign currency that needed to be spent. If they weren't looked after then they might not come back next time, and if they were late then they had probably been spending their money.

Incorporated into the seat back facing Alex was a flat-screen, showing a melodramatic soap opera with bad actors and bad acting. Crap, judged Alex. All that wonderful technology being used for a dismal soap. Well, it could be worse, it could be Pander.

The stewardess wondered why one of the passengers punched off his video screen later when that new British program started.

Alex reported to the FedCon office maintained in Novi Bucuresti, where several branches of the organisation were represented on different floors.

Up on Floor Four: the Mandated Judicial Overview office. A clerk ushered Alex into a sparse room, where he faced a woman sitting stark upright behind a desk. She had piercing, angry eyes.

'Flexibility!' she snapped. Sparks almost shot out of those angry eyes.

'Pardon?' asked Alex, at a loss for a second or so.

'Flexibility, that's the word, that's what we need. Do you have flexibility?'

'Why - my nickname is Mister Flexible,' replied Alex firmly, playing a part.

The woman opened a desk drawer and produced a ziplocked police evidence bag, full of magazines.

'Then take a look at these. Here's a bag if you feel sick.'


	17. Chapter 17

20) Ecce Picoscopic

KRASNIY KAMENIEV/RED ROCK

MARS

EARTH RELATIVE OCTOBER 10TH

Lovell made himself comfortable in one of the sub-Martian rooms provided for him. It had belonged to one of the dead, killed when the rec dome depressurised, killed by asphyxiation, blast, debris and exsanguination. They allocated the room to him deliberately, too; perhaps the Red Rock establishment were sending a not-too-subtle message to him. Like, don't stay.

Overall, Red Rock came as a considerable disappointment to Lovell. After a few days one's internal regimen adapted to lower gravity and you noticed nothing exotic within the complex; after all, a windowless room was simply a windowless room, and there were plenty of those back on Earth. To even get a hint of an alien vista, you needed to go peer out from one of the portholes in a rec dome to see Mars in its natural state. When Lovell suggested a trip outside the reaction of Griskiewicz had been unfeigned horror: let an untrained, inexperienced novice loose on the Martian surface in an EVA suit that cost upwards of ten million, to contend with reactive soil, friable rock strata, gas pockets, radiation, rockfalls, gravity euphoria, disorientation - no! No! and NO again!

In part of his introductory routine Lovell had thoroughly explored the layout of Red Rock, making sure that people got to see him while he saw them, so he became less of a stranger. One of the first sites on his visit was Chamber Six, the destroyed rec dome. All that remained visible - indeed, almost the only thing that remained - of Chamber Six was the door, and that was sealed off. There were camera stills that showed what remained on the other side of that sealed door: the flooring, covered with dust, jagged pieces of wall curving up from the floor like discoloured fangs, a few broken bits of furniture deemed not worth salvaging. There were also camera stills of the victims, gruesome mortuary relics that he skimmed over quickly.

Another priority venue was the plant room ante-chamber. Before the explosion it had been a small room two metres by three metres with a powered sliding door at each end. People entered via one door, then left via the other into the reactor room. Scanners and suction vents ensured that no contaminants entered or left the plant room. _Had_ ensured. For the time being, as a stop-gap measure, a plastic see-through portable airlock stood installed inside the plant room to prevent contamination. Lovell could therefore see the damage caused to the plant room. Both ante-chamber doors had been blown outwards, the one leading into the plant room torn out of its runners and thrown across the floor, ricocheting off a supply conduit en route. The blast had damaged a control panel, which bulged and split, looking embarrassed. Inside the ante room the walls were buckled and split along weld seams; burnt insulation hung dead from loose panels, equally dead wiring dangled flaccidly. Lovell judged that if the detonation were to have taken place in the reactor room then the damage would have been far worse, possibly rendering the whole power generating process impossible.

After three days, to Bhatacharjee's mixed relief and chagrin, Lovell convened a meeting, which he wanted Prue, Griskiewicz and De Huys - the police division head - to attend. They would review evidence gathered so far. The Indian did not look forward to it. He knew from the cargo manifest that Lovell had brought a collection of specialist data-analysis electronics with him, but apart from that Anderson remained a mystery to him. One could conjecture that, since the Antiguan was here on Mars, he had a certain talent for investigation. FedCon wouldn't waste a million marks transporting a non-specialists to Mars, would they? If having FedCon breathing down his neck in the form of Anderson Lovell meant the whole messy, bizarre business got resolved quicker then Bhatacharjee would be happier. Though he'd still feel happier if he knew just what the meeting would cover.

Later, when all four had sat down in Bhatacharjee's personal quarters, Lovell asked for the door to be locked and all transmission sources turned off. His demeanour was curious and implied secret knowledge, spurring all present to wonder what that secret might be.

'Sorry for the delay,' apologised the agent. He presided over a number of black boxes wired together, plugged into a viewing screen and connected to a hand-console with attached microphone. He was having a little trouble making sure all these components were compatible since typically there hadn't been any trouble when he used the equipment himself, but at a public demonstration things went awry.

Finally Lovell felt satisfied. He too sat and handed out a fax with printed details of the presentation.

'I have to say, firstly, that my investigation was solely into the recent accident here, Mister Bhatacharjee. My brief extended no further than that. You might be a little less anxious with that in mind.

'Secondly, my results are due to having the latest electronic gear -' and here he waved a hand at his electronic hardware '- which I brought specifically because Red Rock is seen as being so important. The black boxes consist of Finnish forensic hardware and a British picoscopic analyser package.'

De Huys made a cynical moue.

'Very expensive. Very intricate,' he intoned. "Envy" said his expression.

Lovell stared at the man, wanting to add that the equipment was very difficult to use, even though he had spent the long months of the journey from Earth learning to use it.

'I'm going to channel input from the set and run it into the wall screen. That way we can all see.The wall screen was genuine wall-sized display screen, with an accompanying "laser" pointer for didactic patrons. When the disks began to play, the screen flashed up subliminal dates and times. Then came the actual footage (Imperial terms still in use) of events in Chamber Six. No sound since it was deemed un-necessary in a routine recording, no colour because monochrome was cheaper and easier to record. The view came from overhead because the camera had been placed at the chamber's apex alongside the lighting where it would be least obvious, giving a fish-eye perspective.

The panorama showed people sitting at tables, playing a game of cards, reading microfilmed books; occasionally a person entered, their head looming and receding under the lens. Two people stood at a table waving angrily at each other in apparent silence. One stood up and stamped out. Perfectly normal off-duty Martian behaviour. One man lay on the floor staring at the ceiling, and another stood staring out of a porthole at the Martian terrain. Once again, normal off-duty Martian behaviour.

This sequence ran until Lovell felt sure everyone was accustomed to its normality. He then paused the disk and pointed out the rather obvious fact that nothing was going on. Once the disk re-started they saw the prostrate man abruptly get up and walk out; as he did so he bumped into another, incoming person. The locking doors powered themselves shut behind the departee.

'That last was Halloran, going out. Lucky lad. He missed it by a whisker.'

They all watched the last entrant remain standing by the doors. De Huys recognised the man as Calvino. Again, for long, boring seconds, nothing happened. Then, no warning, a sudden flash obscured the view. When it cleared clouds of debris were scudding outwards into the Martian atmosphere, bodies threshed on the floor, the chamber walls were shattered and of Calvino - no trace remained. Nor was the camera unaffected. Gradually the after-effects of blast and decompression stripped away the chamber walls until the video lost its support and began showing images of sky, then ground and nothing at all.

'The camera got picked up ten meters from the dome but fortunately the disks were still whole and integral. Now I'm going to re-run it with the data analysers switched on.'

From a grainy monochrome image the video suddenly became cuttingly clear. Lovell demonstrated how capable the equipment was by carrying out an internal zoom on the card players, then panning across to the previously mentioned Halloran and tracking across his face.

'Look at those pupils,' muttered De Huys, professionally interested.

From that frozen frame the video forwarded to the point when Halloran rose and made ready to leave. There Lovell left the disk, paused, for a tangential discussion.

'Why did you suspect an internal explosion caused the damage, and what made you suspect that Calvino was the culprit?'

A short silence. Then a short discussion.

'Deduction,' replied Bhatacharjee. 'Over the whole history of Red Rock there have been only four disasters like this one. None were design flaws or externally influenced, they were all caused by an explosion within a dome. Their design, you see, makes them invulnerable to everything except such an event. The last one was a bottle heater with a fault, I believe.'

'And Calvino?'

'More deduction. Nothing happened until he entered the room, the blast took place where he stood, and, unlike other victims, there wasn't anything left of him to recover.

Lovell nodded. He then changed the disks in the playback unit.

'I'm playing the footage we have of Grice in the reactor section. Obviously there were more cameras there, so we have more recordings. I've copied relevant sections onto one disk. My apologies if you've been through this one before.'

Once again the black and white video tones sprang into life, showing an overhead view of a secure door. This was a solidly-built, inter-leaved access point, guarded by one of De Huys police force. Staff could enter only if the policeman was satisfied about their legitimacy.

Grice, seen from above, abruptly arrived in front of the guard and without hesitation drew a length of heavy piping from his jacket and clubbed the unfortunate warden to the floor. Such was the severity of the assault that both piping and police helmet were fractured (a sequence that made Bhatacharjee wince whenever he witnessed it). The aggressor reached down and pulled hard at his victim's uniform, ripping free a smart-card that he placed in the relevant wall slot. Obediently the door rolled open.

Lovell stopped the image temporarily at that point, indicating the wall slot with his pointer.

'Point of interest number one. Grice stole this card to use but he couldn't have known that it has an underlying code; if it is used with a different thumbprint from the user's a 999 code is entered and broadcast.'

De Huys nodded in agreement. The warden's card should not have opened the door, but it had. Only the warning function worked successfully, alerting those in the reactor complex.

Lovell started his display running again, which changed to show another overhead view. This view came from inside the reactor complex; two nervous guards could be seen, each holding a pistol, two of the twelve legally licenced guns within Red Rock now pointed at the entrance doorway where Grice stood. A strobe epi-alarm pulsed at the renegade, hopefully to incapacitate him, though in real life it had no effect. Grice started towards the ante-room door.

Red Rock used both liquid and solid fuel as emergency reserves and to power it's Rover vehicles, used in exploration, but power for the complex came from three fusion reactors (a mere fraction of the necessary came from solar panels). They had been installed recently as the size of Krasniy Kamenev increased. All residents on Mars were aware of the dangerous and paradoxical nature of their power source, being their only sole life-support and potentially able to fatally contaminate one thousand times over. Net result: armed guards stood watch over the reactor complex with standing orders to use whatever force they considered necessary to prevent damage, wilful or not. Nobody without a smart card was allowed to enter; those who arrived had to wait for processing; once through that an escort showed arrivals into the reactor section.

None of which procedure Grice had followed, so he was promptly shot while he ran, by both his fellow--workers. He didn't even slow down. One policeman lowered his gun in disbelief, the other kept on shooting whilst Grice raced into the ante-chamber and pressed a button to close the door. Once more the video view changed to an overhead shot, from a camera set into the ceiling of the ante-room. Grice managed to enter the small room whilst bullets thudded dully into it, but he failed to shut the door completely. Then he simply stood, in the middle of the floor.

As happened in Chamber Three, there was a brief, intense flash and debris filled the room.

Again the view changed, this time from a camera opposite the ante-room door, within the reactor room. Nothing happened for strained seconds. Then, as two technicians walked past, the door silently burst out of it's sockets in a storm of dust and smoke; it cannoned into the passers-by, carried on and bounced off a humpback reactor housing, careered high in the air and embedded itself in a control console. Sparks flared briefly for a few seconds. The most disconcerting part of the whole sequence was that it took place in total silence.

'All au fait?' asked Lovell. 'You ought to be, you've seen this a dozen times. Now, I'm going to run it again, but enhance this time.

'Okay, this is Interesting Anomaly Number One, where the smart card opens a door that ought to stay shut. Nobody has yet suggested a convincing explanation for it, barring divine intervention.'

Griskiewicz frowned heavily.

'What is the chance of this happening by chance?' he asked.

Lovell shrugged. As he understood if from his own background knowledge and calculations provided by a Red Rock electronics expert, the chances were of the order of once per universe lifetime.

'A gruesome bit here. Grice got shot eleven times at point blank range. He wasn't noticeably slowed down - not even carrying all that extra weight, as a policeman said.'

De Huys felt obliged to point out that his small police force used "Squash Head" bullets that were guaranteed not to go through sensitive structures like pressure dome walls but which were conversely guaranteed to make a mess of people. Grice excepted.

'Notice how the smart-card also works on the ante-room door, where it shouldn't.'

Lovell turned off the display temporarily to summarise the forensic findings and what they had all witnessed so far.

Item: Grice and Calvino were responsible for the explosions but their modus operandi remained unknown. Also, as was seen from the disks time track, both explosions took place at the same time, to within tenths of a second of each other.

Item: nobody noticed anything remotely odd about the two kamikazes before their coeval suicides. Nor were there any suicide notes or any other explanations, nor had their weekly psychology tests revealed anything untoward.

Item: the highly sensitive and accurate "sniffers" in the reactor room failed to detect any trace of explosive substances.

Conjecture: both were participants in a planned, deliberate act of self-destruction.

Lovell carried on, explaining that he had been very unhappy about the lack of any trace of explosive substance, so he went backward over the critical frames again. Each frame was resolved and enhanced, enlarged and analysed. Lovell had been surprised at his end result, and unpleasantly surprised. When he returned to the forensic results his surprise turned to perplexity.

21) Tables Overturned

BRANCUSI INSTITUTION

NOVI BUCURESTI

OCTOBER 10

Constantin strolled down the corridor towards the East Wing, swinging his collection of MagIC keys on their sealed loop. He was due to meet Doctor Buttel to help with one of the schizophrenic children who didn't respond to chemotherapy, but he was early and didn't want to rush. It could be grim work, helping to restrain a child who behaved like a little demon; then again it was equally unpleasant to see one of them lying there like a human cabbage.

A cleaner pushed a mop around further down the corridor, so Constantin stopped for a quick time-wasting chat with him.

'Hello.'

The cleaner stopped moving his piece of equipment backwards and forwards over the same piece of floor, took a cigarette from behind one ear and lit it. He stuck one hand in a pocket and nodded.

'Non-tobacco,' he said, pointing at the cigarette. 'Machorka. Off to lock 'em up, are you?'

Constantin laughed, a little embarrassed.

'No, no, not at all. They want me to help with one of the kiddies who needs holding down. They can get a bit upset.'

The cleaner nodded sagely.

'Oh aye, you're a big bloke. Do they need a bloke big as you to hold down a child?'

Constantin frowned. There seemed to be an air of criticism in the question.

'You'd be surprised how strong they can get when they go berserk, friend. I don't beat them up, if that's what you mean.'

The cleaner just went "aha" , puffing away at his cigarette. Constantin turned to go, feeling a strange unease at being talked at in such a way. He turned back to the cleaner but the man ignorantly returned to his cleaning, oblivious to anything else, so Constantin had no chance to restate his view.

The "restraining" turned out to be extremely unpleasant, with the child flailing, screaming, biting and kicking while Doctor Buttel tried to carry out the assessment. Instead of fifteen minutes it took an hour, at the end of which Buttel still looked surprisingly pleased. He carefully replaced the extracting syrette in its protective case and labelled each of the phials with their extract type.

'Good! Good!' he beamed. 'Much better!'

Better than what, wondered Constantin. The German doctor wasn't too hot on his Slavic, tending to break into excitable German if he didn't concentrate.

After saying goodbye to the cheerful doctor (who most staff were convinced was not entirely sane) Constantin made a tour of the North Wing. Because he spent far longer on the assessment than usual he was late for his rounds, which meant that he waited until mid-afternoon for his lunch. His stomach protested loudly at this imposition. Still, he remained professionally watchful and cheerful whilst patrolling the various wards and dayrooms, inspecting children at play and work. He intervened only once, to break up a squabble between two girls and a boy, using his considerable bulk to counterpoise his gentle manner. After that he returned to the canteen via the central Admin block to snatch a quick cup of coffee and a sandwich. A group of cleaners were playing cards at a table with considerable if muted cursing; apart from that he had the whole place to himself. Soon the cleaners left and he sat alone, only his thoughts for company. They weren't much, as companions went; his thoughts went continually to his wife, Jarmila, whom he hadn't seen all day and wouldn't see for another day yet. That was the big drawback of semi-residential shift work, big wages but unsocial hours. The kids at home always asked where he was if he didn't greet them at least once per day. Well, they needed the money for a new house, so he had little choice but to carry on with the slogging work - Jarmila stayed at home to look after the children so they only had the one wage coming in. He sighed deeply, glad that there were no others to hear him, feeling that at least his work here had social merit, he could be stuck in an office shuffling paper all day instead of raising the quality of life of these orphans.

Constantin had started work at ten that morning and, after taking lunch and coffee-breaks, wasn't due to finish until midnight. It was a long shift, but not one of the harder ones to work since at night the children were asleep and much less restive. Potential adopters usually came to collect their charges during night shifts for the same reason.

Before departure he needed to make out a report on the day's assessment with Doctor Buttel, his rounds on the wards, dayrooms and dormitories, any complaints or protests that staff entered and, because it was the end of the administrative month, the state of the Institute's stocks, stores and structure. Having completed this mind-numbing chore, he felt like a stroll. He was off-duty yet didn't mind an extra ten minutes or so examining "his" buildings and the orphans within them.

As expected, all stood quiet, with the Institute's secondary lighting on in corridors to save power. Constantin stuck his head around a ward entrance and nodded at the nurse on duty there. She frowned back, until she recognised him and came over.

'What's up, Monitor?'

'Just having a last look around. How's it going?'

The nurse shrugged.

'All quiet. The little dears are all asleep, even the ones who are little or dears.'

Constantin laughed quietly, thinking: for a change.

'Fine, my shift's over now. I'm off home. Bye.'

'Lucky old you,' commented the nurse, tartly. 'Mine's only just begun.'

To get from the West Wing to the staff car park meant going into the Admin block again, at ground level. Passing the main corridor to Reception he nearly tripped over a bucket and mop left lying around a corner. Cursing briefly, he pushed them aside and looked around for the absent owner, seeing no-one. Bloody careless, the lighting here isn't too good and a person could have an accident on those things. He carried on down the corridor. Then he caught sight of a door left ajar. Odd, he thought. Then: hang on, that door - is the Director's. He never stays after five and is damn certain never to let anyone not a doctor or director get in there. Who's in there at this time?

Retracing his steps he returned to the open door. Dim light, open doors, nobody in sight; pretty creepy, in fact. Nor could he hear anything from within the room. Not subscribing to the traditional method of asking "Who's there?", the Monitor threw the door open and slammed the light switch on.

Anticlimax. There were no intruders lurking in the Director's room. Nor were there many places to hide. Constantin checked behind the big mock-wood desk, beside the filing cabinets, even under the computer table, without result. There was another door in the Director's room leading into the next corridor, so Constantin tried it. Unlocked. He opened it and peered up and down the corridor but saw no-one.

Well, better not stay in the Director's precious room if there was no good reason to, he might get blamed for those opened doors. When he came back tot he corridor neither bucket nor mop remained.

I'll have words with the person responsible for that, thought the Monitor, an intent that had faded and been forgotten by the time he got home. When next he remembered, several days later, he considered that it was probably coincidence that the door stood open. After all, it was MagIC locked and only Director Iliescu had a key, so nobody else could have broken in. Constantin's decision not to follow up the incident was to have important repercussions, not least for him.

The Monitor returned to his fourteen hour shift on Thursday, later that week. Doctor Bussel wanted him to help in another assessment, one that both knew would be difficult. To pacify his stomach he consumed a sandwich before the appointment whilst going on a tour of the North Wing. This area housed the children on the "Risk" register, frequently in need of medication or restraint due to their various mental illnesses; normally, in accord with FedCon guidelines, children were integrated with their peers instead of being walled off. Constantin often felt mingled anger and pity for them: pity for their condition, anger that society so ostracised and rejected them that only the despised FedCon would take them on. These children didn't start the Last War, did they? So why treat them like the villains not the victims?

The MagIC keys on his loop were needed to get past every door in the North Wing since they were secure doors. Not just to prevent kids getting out but to prevent others getting in. So, following the insert-press-extract-open-shut routine, Constantin went around the North Wing, getting into a mannered acceptance of the security delays.

Suddenly, turning a corner, he came face to face with a man pushing a mop. The surprise made him jump.

'Sign of a guilty conscience,' said the cleaner, deadpan.

'Eh? Hang on, I recognise you. You get around, don't you.'

The cleaner tipped his hat insolently.

'I'm a general relief. I do what the others aren't around to do. Today Ion is on leave so I do his job instead. Here to straitjacket a kiddie, are you?'

Constantin flushed with anger. This man had a way of being insulting just in the way he stood.

'I don't like your attitude, friend. I don't certify the children in here - if they get jacketed it's to protect themselves and others.'

To this the cleaner responded with a shrug. "Bored already" said his posture and expression. Constantin ploughed on, goaded by the man's insulting ignorance.

'I've got two little ones of my own, so I know what I'm talking about. Our children here are treated in the best way, the best, and if you want to keep your job-' this point being emphasised with a prodding finger '-you can stop being sly with me. Now, get out of my way!'

Off strode the Monitor, fuming with righteous indignation. Guilty conscience indeed! Ha!

Jarmila got a slightly coloured version of this exchange when her husband came home from the Institute to their flat in the small hours of the morning. She could tell her husband was cross because he wouldn't sit still and instead chose to stand and pace about. Eventually he calmed down and went to bed with her. Why so upset? She wondered. He did a hard and thankless job, did it well and never allowed the ill-informed to trouble him about his occupation or how he did it. Perhaps the shift work was running him down. Yes, that must be it, he'd gotten over-tired and this temper was the result.

Having taken a fortnight's leave at his wife's urgent pleading, on his return Constantin walked back into the Institute's doors to be greeted by the mixed smells of the place: disinfectant, food (especially cabbage), vomit, lino and air freshener all blended together into Institute-smell.

Signing-in extended beyond a formally whilst Irina quizzed him about the holiday.

'Nothing much. We went to Kiev with the kids, though, stayed over a couple of nights. Nice place, but I wouldn't -'

'You wouldn't want to live there,' interrupted Irina. 'Yes, I know, one of my boyfriends lived in Kiev and I went to stay there with him. The traffic is awful and they're all really rude. The best thing about Kiev - what's that?'

A low black GEV had parked, badly, on the staff car park. It's gull-wing doors swung upwards and people climbed out, then paced over determinedly to the glass doors of Reception. One person remained outside, the others entered.

'Hi! Recognise me?' asked their leader.

'You're the cleaner - Vaclav, isn't it?' responded Irina. Constantin recognised the accusatory cleaner, too.

'Wrong.' The cleaner's voice lost all of it's bonhomie and he reached down to his boot, coming up with a long, thin metal object that both Constantin and Irina recognised as a Zap Gun.

'Recognise this? Yes, rather more accurate guess this time. Miss Eremenko, keep away from the switchboard and phones. Stasha, the wires, please.'

One of the others produced a small, mono-bladed knife and carefully cut the phone line in two places.

'What are you bloody fools doing?' exclaimed Constantin in astonishment and worry, believing that these were thieves out to rob the Insititute of - and to his astonishment Vaclav produced a Red Card and smiled broadly. The cleaner belonged to UNION?

Vaclav laughed.

'Constantin, your face. Don't worry, all will be revealed. We are working for Internal Audit, investigating the Institute and staff. Do as we ask and you may get promoted.'

They took the Monitor into an empty dayroom, leaving Irina under the watchful eye of their woman at the doorway. Vaclav produced a sealed plastic bag and tipped the contents onto a table in front of Constantin.

Skin? thought the Romanian. No, naked bodies. Porno books. So what - he looked closer and realised how young some of the featured actors were.

'Those are children!' he said, sharply. Vaclav nodded.

'Illegal and immoral. You haven't seen their last pages, though, friend, because that's where the children get murdered. Their title in English - well, no, _American_ , the English wouldn't like it described as their title - is "Sex 'n' Snuff".'

Constantin turned to one of the rear pages and felt his stomach flip, anger welling up. He closed the book quickly, feeling tainted from merely touching it.

'Why do you show me this - this rubbish?' he asked, coldly. Vaclav replied equally coldly.

'Because those children came from this Institute, Mister Romanescu.'

Constantin looked up in astonishment.

'Yes, you heard me correctly. From this Institute. We found out when the American Catholic Underground smuggled a teenaged drug-addict out from a Californian porn-parlour. Lucky for him; not many survive this process. Name of Simon. He told us where he came from.'

'From here? He came from here?' The Monitor couldn't believe what he heard.

'Yes. Your Director, his Deputy, the Matron and a Monitor are able to sell off children. The Monitor selects them, Matron examines them, the Deputy carries out the paperwork and the Director calls in an American to take them away.'

Constantin slapped his head. Of course! Those Canadians - always present at night when there were few witnesses, with an explanation for their accents.

'Which Monitor?' he asked, wondering if he could get to the man and beat him senseless before these people arrested him.

Vaclav shook his head. He didn't want any complications, including dead suspects. The set-up here had been very compact, partly explaining it's success; only four people involved. He wanted all four to go unimpeded to trial, which might not happen -

_Bang!_ went the table as the Monitor smashed it with a clenched fist. He had spotted a face on one of the magazine's back pages, where the thing fell open, a face he recognised amid a welter of gore: Lila Angelicu, a ten year old nicknamed "Hedgehog" because of her preferred hairstyle, a short spiky crop.

'Who is it! I'll gut the bastard with a chisel! Just tell me who -'

'Calm down, Romanescu. We want them to go to trial with all their arms and legs attached. More than that, we want their American contacts, who are due to attend a meeting with the Director this very afternoon, in this building. Must be important for them to break cover in daylight. Anything you do to the Americans, if we get them, will be pale and merciful compared to what their own people would do. Regardless, don't think of having a go yourself.'

Vaclav didn't enthuse very much because that would have given away the extent of his poking and prying, but this was the only occasion the Americans had ever done business in daylight and they were executing a major plan. The simple act of catching the Director together with American agents would doom him to at least five years ice-grinding in McMurdo Sound. Matron and Deputy Szilard were already in custody. Monitor Sabic still remained on duty within the Institute, unaware of the fate of his accomplices. Vaclav sent one of his minions off to detain the free Monitor.

'Will you be okay here?' asked the last remaining agent.

'Oh, I think so. Don't worry. Once you've taken him out to the car, bring the projector back.'

An hours-long wait ensued. Constantin fretted impatiently, mentally reviewing all the adoptions over the past years; he felt certain there had been signals he had missed and blamed himself for blind ignorance. Hindsight was a big stick and he beat himself with it, repeatedly.

Constantin had heard of American "Porn Parlours" before, a major industry in California, using non-Americans by preference because they had no legal existence and there would be no punishment if such people suffered or died. Constantin was unaware of the voracious appetite of this industry; it's victims were killed deliberately for the unbelievably vile sex and "snuff" industry grown from an underground legend into a nightmare reality, died from "client trauma application", contracted diseases, became drug addicts by policy to ensnare them further, ran away, got arrested, committed suicide. A lucky few, a fortunate, were smuggled out of America by one of the weedlike underground organisations that flourished there, such as the ACU or Democratic Labour.

The Director and two accompanying people left their very expensive car and walked across to Reception. Unseen to them, a low black GEV pulled up behind their car, blocking any movement. The sentry on watch at Reception hid carefully after giving a warning.

So the Director simply nodded to the girl on Reception's front desk and carried on. He ushered the two guests into his room and experienced a heart-stopping surprise.

'Hi there,' said Vaclav in American-accented English, very comfortably seated behind the Directors desk. The two guests, Americans, looked blankly at each other, then turned to go. Too late. Monitor Romanescu stood in the doorway, armed with a club and a stare that threatened more than his weapon. He slapped it into an open palm, making a nasty, hollow sound.

At first the Director shouted and blustered, until he caught sight of a pornographic magazine on the desk. Then he became very quiet, thinking up reasons and excuses.

Vaclav leaned back in the comfortable chair. He had to play things carefully now; a statement would be nice to tie up all the loose ends and the evidence to date, but a confession would be even better. If the Director tried to tough things out the end result would be a lengthy and embarrassing public trial, bringing all sorts of unwanted information to attention. The MJO preferred a nice low-profile prosecution of FedCon members. Captive American agents, on the other hand, were guaranteed a judicial spectacular. A detail of FAA provosts were en route from Kiev to collect the agents, so all Vaclav needed to do was baby-sit them for the immediate future. His aides dragged the Americans away, separately, to be locked up. Neither spoke (good practice for captured spies or agents) but they were pale and jittery.

That left Vaclav and the Director alone.

(First, soften your target up, like the Meatgrinder)

'You're a very unpleasant man,' said Vaclav in a neutral tone. 'One of the most unpleasant men I've met in my career.' (Technically true, even if it was a short career).

'I didn't know what they did! I didn't know - my God, do you think that I'd have done that deliberately - I didn't -'

'My opinion is that you didn't give a shit what happened to your charges once they left here, Director.'

(Second stage. Attack.)

Vaclav jumped out from behind the desk and put his victim in an armlock; he forcibly dragged the Director out of his room and down the corridor, encouraging the man with vicious, well-placed kicks.

'In there. Open it with your teeth, the lock's off.'

The Director complained. He got another kick for that, until finally he managed to open the door with his teeth, no mean feat for a terrified man held in an awkward, painful grip. Vaclav propelled him into the room with an ungentle shove.

'This is our interview room. We already have your accomplices in custody. More than that, we have all that coded information you carefully secreted on your computer. Also, we have videoed disk records from the bugs I planted in your office.'

Yes indeed. Alex - masquerading as Vaclav the cleaner - had puzzled about the information hidden within the computer. Being a night cleaner enabled him to get into the Director's office undetected but he couldn't possibly decrypt the codes in the time available. So he simply copied the hard card to another, portable one set up by a computer expert, then mailed the copy to Novi Bucuresti. He didn't have an inkling of what resided on either disk, though it must have been serious enough for the Director to turn visibly green.

Not that his complexion improved when he saw the body. That of a man, naked, lying in a pool of blood in a corner of the interview room, where blood pooled around his back. The man's face lay toward the wall yet from his bald spot the Director knew it was Sabic. His tongue stuck firmly to the roof of his mouth and his feet tingled coldly.

Alex looked over at the corner, too.

'Oh, him. You recognised him. Yes, I'm afraid we got a little carried away with him. He died.'

Alex dipped a hand in the blood and smeared it on the cringing Director's face, smiling a hateful smile of no humour but much malice.

'Imagine this is the blood of the children you sold into slavery and drug addiction and death, Director.' The voice was quiet and neutral but the eyes, the eyes were like little chips of diamond, Alex barely suppressing the disgust and anger accumulated throughout the weeks of working undercover. 'Now, suppose you start telling me the truth about your little escapades here before -' and he gestured towards the body in the corner, smiling that bleached smile again.

At this the Director's nerve broke. He started to babble in ho special order about his dealings with the Americans, arrangements for transfer, cheques, monies, vetting of children, approaching other contacts; he went on and on and it was all recorded. Finally, for verification purposes, Alex asked him to state positively that no duress had been exerted, to which the Director assented. By that time he would have cut his own throat, so desperate was he to escape from the cold, calculating hatred that shone out of the ex-cleaners eyes, a hatred only just under control.

Then Alex turned the projector off and the "body" disappeared. Making a hologrammatic representation had been relatively easy, but finding the blood to go with it had been much harder, necessitating a visit to a kosher slaughterhouse after hours (truly a quantum difference between this and shuffling paper at Benford). Of course, they could have got the same effect by turning Romanescu loose but dead suspects were hard to prosecute.

"Flexibility", it turned out, meant working undercover within the four walls of a FedCon orphans institution in Novi Bucuresti. Funny business going on there, it seemed. Alex would be a humble relief cleaner standing in for staff on holiday, working nights whenever possible, ferreting around, pushing an antique bucket with a tatty mop (local funds being low). Alex didn't mind, not at all, not after seeing where and how ex-inmates of the Brancusi Institute ended up.

The wildly-staring woman encamped behind her desk seemed extremely hostile towards Alex - or so he thought. When he reported in to the two jocular agents responsible for "Various Nefarious Activities", as they referred to themselves, they reassured him that Mad Alice always behaved like that, except when she was worse. They provided him with false ID and an accommodation address: a cheap hotel near the centre of Novi Bucuresti.

The "Elysium otel" was where Alex returned that night after the successful bagging of the Institute criminals. He bought a small bottle of Tsuica from the hotel bar where they had either that, or vodka, or imported Ukranian beer. The elevator smelt of urine and old cigarette smoke that the cloying disinfectant couldn't quite cover. When he walked down the corridor to his room a door opened and a thin, dark-haired woman clad only in underwear glared at him.

'Where the fuck have you been! - oh - shit - sorry, I thought you were somebody else. Sorry.' She slammed the door shut. Alex stared at it for a second, shook his head and moved on.

He didn't put the lights on in his room, which helped to camouflage it's seediness. Instead he opened the curtains wide, cracked the seal on his bottle and stared out into the hear of the night, taking sips of plum brandy. There weren't too many lights to brighten the nights in Novi Bucuresti but he watched them come and go; traffic on the roads, once or twice an aircraft overhead. Periodically his breath fogged the window and he had to rub it clear. From this vantage point an observer could see the Brancusi Institute if they knew where to look. Alex tried not to.

There's something sick in our world if people are capable of doing what they did to those children, he ruminated, breaking a self-made promise not to mentally go over events yet again.

Children, sold off like cattle, treated like cattle if it comes to that, he thought. People who claim it wasn't their fault, they didn't do anything terribly wrong, the children would have come to a bad end anyway. Sick bastards! I hope they get five years hard labour at McMurdo Sound. Apart from the American agents. I hope they get five-star hotel treatment, luxury accommodation, all charges dropped and free passage home to Washington. Then their own people will torture them to death.

He drank more tsuica.

I hope the next assignment is less of an encounter with low-life vermin than this one. Ugh. The things you find hiding under stones.

Collapsing backwards onto the bed, probably breaking the springs, he contemplated the ceiling whilst draining the bottle. Finally, thought processes rendered incoherent by alcohol, he fell asleep.

Next morning Alex awoke unaffected by his drinking binge of the night before. That made him feel good. What made him feel bad was that he'd neglected to make out a report on his mission. FedCon obviously wouldn't survive much longer if he didn't make out such a report so he started right away.


	18. Chapter 18

22) FGR KIA

ICE07

NORTHEN PACIFIC GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

OCTOBER 13

Weiss felt on edge, a feeling that had manifested itself for several hours. Although not an unduly possessive man, he felt that his civilian counterparts were almost committing an act of trespass, carrying out their inspection of the Iceberg.

They seemed impressed by how functional everything was aboard the orbital command post, also mildly surprised at how small it's internal dimensions were. Bibor acted as tour guide, with Rossi as an impeccably dressed escort.

Bibor ensured the representatives knew how old the vehicle they were travelling in was, calmly adding that since it had been built it had been overhauled fifteen times. But, an overhaul actually constituted a major operation since it meant a host of technicians and piles of equipment needed to be bussed up from Downside. What UNION needed, really, was another, bigger Iceberg.

McIlwain and Ben Jedid, representatives of the Extraordinary Caucus, didn't laugh or nod at that. They knew what kind of hint their host dropped. Every time civilians went on a tour of the Iceberg numerous subtle and not-so-subtle hints were dropped about how old it was and how much a new vehicle would serve better. However, UNION found itself in a dilemma: if they performed so well despite the antiquity of their hardware, why bother to upgrade or replace it at vast expense? And should they fail to do so then why should more money be wasted on them?

The visitors next venue was the observation deck, unofficial rest room and recreation facility of the Iceberg, in so far as it ever actually had recreation facilities.

Bibor hurriedly shooed away two off-duty crew who were playing an interactive video game in a carrel. They went with considerable bad grace and many backward glances, but once they had gone the Hungarian could demonstrate the relative lack of leisure amenities. Duty aboard the Iceberg was usually routine - occasionally panic-stricken and desperate, but usually routine - and off-duty time could be claustrophobic, boring and tedious; decent entertainment would alleviate any symptoms of such neglect. To McIlwain and Ben Jedid the observation deck seemed pokey and undersized but they did notice several sophisticated viewing screens and interactive software games arrayed in the cubicles. Expenditure going in one direction, they assumed; common sense, they were told. If you had the fixed and expensive hardware, the best you could do was to buy the best software since it came relatively cheaply.

'Just a minute,' said McIlwain. 'That wall chrono.'

All four looked at it, a metre wide analogue clock.

'Yes?' enquired Bibor.

'Why doesn't my watch agree with it?'

Because the Iceberg ran on its own internal time, was the answer. Crossing the IDL in both directions frequently, GMT or any other time became a nonsense for the command vehicle. A master register in the duty room kept track for official purposes or those curious enough to ask, or obsessive enough to worry about it.

'Bloody hell!' exclaimed Mclwain. 'You mean my watch is right - hell, we have to be somewhere else for that conference in short order, Jedid.'

Bibor carefully filed away for future reference the fact that these two seemed to be on good terms, just in case it was needed.

The Algerian looked worriedly at the wall chrono, then at his wristwatch, then at McIlwain, then at Bibor. The Downside shuttle that had delivered them still remained in Docking and, worse, causing even more delay, the legally-enforcible rest period for their shuttle pilot hadn't expired yet. The man wouldn't want to depart.

Informed of this, Weiss saw and seized an opportunity to impress his guests, with a quick call to Rossi via an earlink. The Italian would pilot one of the FedCon SkyClippers Downside whilst the civilian pilot waited out his rest period.

'Wimp. Should have stayed in bed this morning,' was Rossi's whispered aside to Bibor.

Happily able to disregard the interlopers due to his diverting offer, Weiss returned to his own room to deal with a spectacular backlog of work. The incoming dump-disk bore a stack of calls from Downside, including one that came flagged as "Red Rover" (currently the code for "Vital, call me wherever I may be").

Weiss left that one for a few seconds until he checked the headings on the rest of his workload. They all seemed routine and boring so he tackled the Red Rover.

'Hello sir. Bad news about the RSFG murder; we have had word from the Bundespolizei about the murder weapon and the murderer. Ave Mobile.' Which meant that the Nigerian was in transit and needed to be reached via TACT. Weiss wondered what would drive the man to go mobile like that, a practice used to divert trails or watchers.

After taking thirty seconds to get a connection, Weiss got a grainy colour image of Olukaside, enlarged beyond comfortable resolution, shown on the wall screen. From what Weiss could see the Nigerian sat in a PTV with all windows polarised.

'Oh - sir. You got my Rover call.'

'Of course, you idiot, that's why I'm calling back. Carry on.'

'Right. The Bundespolizei got back in touch with us, about their forensic results. They insisted on going through their pyramid procedure, despite the lead we gave them. They eventually came round to asking us for FedCon fingerprint files of staff and suspects and they got a tally, a one hundred per cent match.'

There came a pause, seemingly for dramatic effect. Weiss's peppery temper got the better of him.

'Don't keep me in suspense, Olukaside!'

'It was Rossi, sir. The fingerprints on the ammunition clip, the bullets fired, time and date - all correspond, sir.'

The normally unflappable Weiss felt stunned, hit from behind by the sledgehammer of incredulity. A member of UNION being the murderer, and that person being Fidelio Rossi.

'Is this reliable? Are you - good God, are you sure?'

Olukaside nodded. Once the Bundespolizei informed him of their print match he retraced all of the Italian's movements on that day. Those movements included flying a Sky Clipper to RSFG Munich; the approach run it made could very possibly have been over the murder site. That had been all he felt comfortable doing; he had no idea about "why".

Colonel Weiss sat back. He had no idea about "why" either. After a brief bout of internal cursing he mentally reviewed Rossi's recent conduct, all that he could remember of it, since there didn't seem to be anything remarkable to stand out.

'Right, Olukaside. Stay mobile, please. I'm going to co-ordinate action from here. Ave fenestre. Duty officer, re-route my calls through to Bibor, then get me a line to Frankfurt, our office there.'

A hissing pause while the call went out.

'Hello, Frankfurt? Go to Line Protocol One. A FedCon agent, Guido Rossi, is due to land a Sky Clipper at Frankfurt airport. Probably within an hour, but it depends on how the aircraft gets stacked by traffic control. Your mission is to arrest and detain Rossi once he lands the aircraft and leaves it. The charges against him are likely to be capital ones, so exercise caution; he's armed and dangerous and there are two Extraordinary Caucus members aboard the aircraft. Whatever you do, please don't shoot holes in them! Amen'

The Frankfurt Crash Crew were three women and one man who sat, bored, in the aged, seedy lounge of UNION's Frankfurt office.

'Action at last,' said one, gloomily, as unhappy at the prospect of action as they were at enduring boredom.

They all knew Rossi by reputation and one of them had actually worked with him; the Italian was not known for his kind, forgiving nature or his gentle, forbearing temper and was a military transferee to UNION to boot, decorated several times and rumoured killer of fourteen people, six of those being dangerous American agents. None of the four were overly eager to cross swords with him.

'Ho. Right, you - yes, you - get a Strobe Stunner for each of us, with two Twitch grenades. And, also, I'd like a body shield.'

'Polyplastic?'

'If they have any, if we merit that. And a couple of Spiders. Quick now!'

Off scuttled one member.

'Next, you contact Motor Pool for clandestine transport. A transit vehicle of some description that's big enough to carry all of us and an unwilling passenger also.'

Another team member left. Before any more instructions could be given the remaining person punched out a number on her TACT.

'Line Protocol Two, URDU connect. Direct to this terminal details of Downside-bound flight from ICE07, departure time approximately of this check.'

Electronic data buzzed backwards and forwards via Polsat, which then intoned the required information._'Incoming flight ICE07-06, given reference VL-331, due to land runway Tango Frankfurt Airport at 14:50 plus or minus ten minutes.'_

'We know that much already.'

'Ah, yes, but if we monitor this line we can find out exactly, precisely, when the Sky Clipper lands. The controllers will have it in a descent pipe and spiral for at least thirty minutes.'

Thoughtful pause.

'If we really need to we can request a hold on VL-331 for about twenty minutes.'

They decided not to do that unless drastic measures were needed, since anything untoward might alert Rossi. "Capital Offence" meant that he wouldn't be inclined to debate matters calmly with the Crash Crew.

McIlwain and Ben Jedid peered out of their respective windows while their aircraft taxied slowly along the tarmac apron, neither really paying attention to a blue-and-white Luft Flug courtesy coach at the terminal. Had they done so, they might have noticed that the airline logo was actually an acetate appliqué and the blue paint bore every appearance of being sprayed on within mere minutes of the coach's arrival at Frankfurt.

The Sky Clipper halted jerkily, brake servos whining as Rossi sought to bring it to a gentle halt, since he was under orders to treat the Caucus members with every consideration. That was why he left the cockpit to open and secure the passenger steps.

The rear door of the Luft Flug coach dropped to the tarmac, making a ramp that four armed and armoured figures raced down at a frantic pace.

'GUIDO ROSSI YOU ARE UNDER CUSTODIAL DETENTION DO NOT MOVE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RESIST WE WILL TAKE RESTRAINING ACTION IF NEEDED.' (Helmet loudspeaker).

Rossi ignored the warning and drew his pistol, but he faced four people with their weapons already pointed; a well-aimed Spider hit him squarely on the chest. The adhesive tendrils, developed from a party novelty known as "String-in-a-tin", sprayed out all over his upper body, hardening upon contact with the air. For good measure he was shot twice with a strobe stunner, big bright blue flashes reflecting up off the ground.

The Italian staggered backwards. He should have fallen to the ground convulsing, but instead remained upright, off-balance, straining at his bonds, glaring ferociously at the four assailants.

'SHIT LET GO WITH THE TWITCH.'

Two of the non-lethal nerve-agent grenades burst at Rossi's feet, sending up a rush of gas, yet he still didn't fall. Still staggering and jerking spasmodically as the gas took effect, he lurched toward the tail of the Sky Clipper. And still he hadn't dropped his pistol; in fact he even managed to fire twice, only to hit his foot.

He shouldn't still be conscious, let alone upright! shuddered the Crash Crew leader.

'STAND STILL.'

By now, accidentally or intentionally, Rossi reached the exhaust flanges of the underwing engine and he carefully leant backwards against the hot metal. At well over a hundred degrees from it's recent usage, the exhausts' metal melted the Spider-webbings immediately, also searing Rossi's skin and uniform in a tarry ellipse across his back. Smoke tendrils curled up and the Italian was free.

'OH NO OPEN FIRE.'

Too late, and Rossi too fast; he threw himself underneath the aircraft fuselage as shots whistled around him, then leapt up on the opposite side. A bullet hit his shin without toppling him, letting blood run down his leg in a large, dark stream.

The Crash Crew chased Rossi but he was once again too fast for them, for all that he had been shot and gassed. Using the port passenger door he entered the port passenger section and locked the door from the inside. Once inside the aircraft he rapidly conveyed via the intercom the fact that he had two ExtraOrdinary Causus hostages at his mercy and that both would die if anyone tried to enter the aircraft.

As a measure of last resort, one of the UNION team shot out the Sky Clipper's tyres. The Crash Crew leader admitted defeat and called the airport police.

'We were monitoring your channel,' replied one of the police. 'A Crisis Response Unit is on it's way to the terminal. Do not take any further action.'

The airport's specialist unit was unhappy with both the performance and account of the UNION Crash Crew. Not actually spoken, the words "bungling" and "amateur" hung in the air, along with an air of arrogance that boded ill. The police, with dog teams, snipers, close-quarter marksmen, lights, cameras, nightscopes and radios carried in at least five trucks, were believers in the theory that numbers could do the job.

'What other demands has he made?' asked the senior detective in charge of the operation.

'Only the one we all heard. Live press and television coverage with media reps in attendance.'

'We can get him outside the aircraft for that,' interrupted a police sniper, 'and have people on the tarmac ready to deal with him.'

His chief nodded and gave orders to that effect.

Two marksmen clad in matt black clothing began crawling across the tarmac to the aircraft's rear, where those within the passenger section would be unable to see them. At the same time Rossi's attention was diverted by a short discussion conducted by loudspeaker, stating that press members were on their way, would he consider leaving the aircraft to meet them? In addition to this, powerful Kleig lights were played over the portholes to dazzle anyone looking outside.

By the time Rossi lowered the passenger door, both police marksmen were in position, crouching unseen beneath the aircraft fuselage.

'What are they using?' asked the worried UNION Crash Crew head.

'Sturmgeschutz MGW55, machine pistols loaded with Squash Head, and they won't miss, either.' Unlike you, went the unspoken part of the sentence.

The Crash Crew leader kept her own counsel. She hoped the police would prevail, yet she knew that they hadn't missed Rossi, who had ignored his wounds and gone racing off like a greyhound.

Rossi came down the passenger ramp with the unwavering muzzle of his gun pressed firmly into his hostage's back, then dragged the other man with him and down the steps. He looked around, suspiciously, before a police spokesman hailed him and diverted his attention.

Out jumped the two police marksmen, assuming recommended firing positions (arms extended, elbows locked, feet wide apart) and began firing; one at the target's head, the other at his heart. The kinetic energy of their shots threw Rossi around, but he kept his balance, retaining an armlock on Ben Jedid, raised his pistol and shot one policeman down. The other marksman stopped shooting as Ben Jedid got into his line of fire. Given an opening, Rossi gunned down the second policeman and then retreated inside with his hostage as a shield, leaving blood from his wounds sprayed on the tarmac. McIlwain, left outside, kept his senses, ran to one side and then headlong for the police perimeter.

The police chief looked aghast at his two officers lying in the open next to the aircraft. One still moved. Confusion reigned while the police attempted to retrieve their two wounded officers, successfully. One actually died but was revived whilst the other suffered serious chest injuries.

The police were temporarily non-plussed at their totally unsuccessful manoeuvre, a failure inexplicable to them because they carried out every action in textbook fashion, right up to the point where Rossi refused to drop down dead. Seeing an opportunity and a chance to exploit it, the UNION leader spoke up with an extreme suggestion, since it seemed obvious that only a drastic solution to the problem would work.

Less than thirty minutes later Rossi emerged from the aircraft again, this time with his pistol firmly stuck in Ben Jedid's left ear, secured by a length of tape. The only area that the police negotiators would allow any press to congregate was in the concourse and Rossi knew that, aware that it would be the only place large enough to accommodate many people but also able to be sealed off easily and securely. Rossi thus needed to leave the aircraft, cross the apron, enter the terminal stairwell, go up three floors and then gain access to the concourse.

For Ben Jedid the journey had all the elements of a slow-motion nightmare, shuffling spasmodically across the tarmac, followed by the stares, muzzles and gunsights of the police cordon, now increased by a regular police presence and airport security guards, too. The duo crossed the apron to a terminal stairwell, stumbled inside and found - nothing. No ambush. Up they went, six flights of stairs, Rossi not trusting the lifts - too vulnerable. From the third floor of the terminal there was a covered concrete walkway, with alternating wall-sized glass panels between the concrete panelling, each blank panel thus facing a window opposite. At the far end of this concourse a pair of swing doors led to the concourse.

The windows were Rossi's undoing. He considered them a possible source of danger, so he turned to face them when he passed, in case the police were out there spying, or trying another rescue. Halfway down the corridor, according to his routine, Rossi turned to face a window. Concrete panelling behind him shattered explosively. A twenty-five millimetre cannon dismounted from the UNION camouflaged escort vehicle had been hastily mounted on a lazy-tong flat bed, hidden by luggage as Rossi crossed the apron, then elevated and jacked into position level with the walkway. Two UNION members with mono-bladed knives quickly scraped and chipped away cement in front of the cannon muzzle, then drilled a (very small) hole to allow them to sight the gun. They were only able to fire twice because of the recoil, which threatened to tear the weapon loose and off the platform.

Cannon shell number one tore into Rossi's back, carried on through him, smashed the opposite window and sailed off into the middle distance, the imparted energy wrenching Rossi away from Ben Jedid. Cannon shell number two hit the Italian in the shoulder at an angle, throwing him out of the broken window, from which he fell ten metres, head first.

It worked! Enthused the UNION leader. The golem is dead!

23) Home Again Home Again

BADFORT TOWERS

LONDON

Alex had been shuttled back to London via Belgrade again, this time as a mere piece of animated cargo aboard a Midi-Mover, sharing a cargo-cabin with half a tonne of cold-boxed organic computer parts. Every so often the co-pilot would come back to check on him and offer him a sip from a hip flask. Alex wondered what the drink was (saki) and why the considerate attention (because the co-pilot had three children and heard on the grapevine that his passenger single-handedly broke up a child-abuse ring), but since the co-pilot was Japanese and the TACT wouldn't work in a moving aircraft, neither of the two could understand each other.

Once back in his flat Alex moodily decided to move. Not "move" as in across the room but out of Badfort Towers altogether. It seemed more like a prison than a home and he felt fed up with it. Being an employee of UNION he fully expected them to interfere in his house-hunting if given the chance, so an advert in an accommodation samizdat ought to do and short-circuit any scrutiny. He would be due for leave soon because of time spent in Moldavia; he could begin to sort out matters then.

There were letters waiting on the mat for him. Surprise, surprise, one was a tax demand. Surprise again, number two letter came from Katrina, who would be visiting England with her husband and wanted to see Alex, catch up on gossip. Due to arrive in two weeks. That settled his leave; book it for two weeks time. Letter number three was a "speculative letter" (known of old as junk mail) that went straight into the recycle bin. Last of all was an Official Communique. He knew it to be one because it stated so in big red letters. Expecting it to be from UNION, surprise surprise, it came from the Greek Consulate in Luxembuorg:

"Dear Citizen your status as a Federated Concordat employee no longer makes it possible to admit you to the Hellenic Republic, date effective as from the postmark of this communication. No correspondence on this matter will be entered into."

Petty bastards, condemned Alex. Why suddenly change their minds about - oh! Have they found out about the Greek connection between myself and Metaxas? This ought to be reported to UNION.

He called in on his TACT, following instructions dimly remembered from the training course and was mildly astonished to get the ghost switchboard as per procedure. Then he needed to wait until a person willing to talk came online and had to explain about the letter again.

'Aha. I see. Only a matter of time, really. If they were thinking straight they would have let you return and then put you on the hook in devious fashion, but you must have annoyed them too much for that. Thanks for calling.'

In the middle of eating a pre-packed meal, Neil rang up. Alex replied by shouting across the room instead of going over and picking up the handset.

'Hi there, coming out for a drink?'

'Mm. Let me think about that. Okay, I've thought about it. I'll come over to your place first.'

'Okay, you can even finish off your tea if you like.'

'Ouch, that English sense of humour. See you, then.'

Neil wasn't alone in his flat; Moira and Ellie were also there. Neil cheerfully shooed all three of his guests outside into the bitter night air and told them which way they were going: north, to a local pub, the Five Wheels. Once they arrived Neil waited until Moira and Ellie went to the bar to order before broaching what he considered to be a delicate subject, in what he considered to be a delicate manner.

'Why didn't you call her!' he asked, aggressively.

'Call who?' flustered Alex, taken off-guard. 'Do you mean Ellie?'

'Yes I do! She left her number and address with you at your party, on a piece of paper. You, however, didn't call her.'

Alex blinked. A piece of paper. The party -

'I didn't - no, wait a minute, UNION found a piece of paper in my flat before I did - so it came from Ellie, did it? They thought she was a spy in Foreign Assignments, conspiring with me. She likes me - well, she could express it better!'

'Er - she's shy,' mumbled Neil, embarrassed at the trouble caused. A snort came from Alex in reply. He opened his mouth to protest but decided not to as the women came back from the bar with a tray of drinks. In fact, no-one spoke.

For long minutes a painful silence lay in front of the group, until Moira broke it with a plaintive sigh that came from the heart.

'Come on, drink up, we didn't come out to have a bad time.'

Ellie looked nervously at Alex, who looked coolly back at her. The atmosphere felt bad. Clearly, this social event was going nowhere. Neil felt responsible for the faux pas but didn't dare admit it and couldn't think of anything to say. Alex felt distinctly hostile to Ellie but was too polite and socially cowardly to say so openly. Ellie herself felt upset at such a strange attitude. Moira considered the whole evening to be a waste of time already.

'Try this for size,' she said. '"Honesty is better than tact."'

'What on earth are you on about?'

Alex butted in.

'Personally, I prefer honesty,' he said, looking at Ellie. 'If an attitude exists then one ought to express it.'

Ellie blushed in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. She abruptly reversed her opinion of the Serb; who did he think he was, sitting in moral judgement on her like that?

Neil intervened before things ran even further out of control.

'It was a rhetorical question, to break the ice, you dickhead.'

'Hey, no bickering, please. No point scoring.'

Alex came up with a winning strategy, preceded by a winning smile. He got up, walked away and left the pub, leaving the other three drinkers to look bemusedly at each other.

'He can't have gone, he's left his coat and it's freezing outside,' commented Moira. 'There he is, back again.'

Alex gave them a wave, came over and sat down.

'Good evening. How nice to meet you all here. Is this drink for me?' and he politely shook hands with them all. It was his way of starting from scratch again and although a little odd, it worked.

Ellie leaned back a little when Alex leaned towards her.

'I am sorry to upset you with my comment, but your note got me into trouble with Internal Audit. They saw it before I did.'

'Oh! I didn't realise that's what happened, I just - well, I'm sorry too.' She reversed her reversed opinion and decided that Alex might be alright and his sad eyes looked quite come-to-bed with a sparkle in them.

'Accidents happen. Don't worry about it.' To be polite, forgiving and to curry favour, Alex bought the next two rounds. By eleven Ellie felt just tipsy enough to be curious and disregard Neil's injunction about Yugoslav politics. Or almost tipsy enough, a little common sense remained.

'Why don't you like Hungarians?' she asked with an intent look.

Alex stared back at her. She had freckles.

'Because of the Last War. Because of what they and the Romanians did to the Balkans with their nuclears.'

Neil rolled his eyes heavenwards. Alex could be remarkably bigotted and partisan for a man who claimed to be a model liberal compared to most other Serbs. Please, beseeched Neil of no deity in particular, don't let him start going on about this in detail.

The eleven thirty bell chimed out. Under the quaint, not to say odd, English licensing laws the pub was now deemed to be a night-club and all drink prices automatically doubled. Acting on this cue a herd of drinkers, including the foursome, left the inn, leaving it to the thirsty, the partying or the better-off.

'Snow!' exclaimed Moira, the first to emerge into the night air, which bit at them. While they had been drinking inside a thin layer of snow settled over the neighbourhood.

'White Christmas again, I bet,' said Neil, trying to scrape up enough flakes for a snowball but failing.

Alex felt a premonitory twinge in his knees. Despite all that anaesthetising alcohol those plastic patellae were acting up again and he would have trouble walking.

'Uh, could you slow down a little?' he asked.

'Pissed again, you drunken fart! Oh - hang on, shit, sorry, are you all right?'

Alex shrugged. He would be, if they didn't walk too fast. Inconvenient and embarrassing, stricken so inelegantly in front of Moira, who he liked, and Ellie, who liked him.

'Your kneecaps, right?' asked Neil, already knowing the answer from past experience. 'Come on, once you get up to mine I'll turn up the heating. Give him a hand.'

'No, no I am okay. I mean, I will be alright. Ach! Yebat Amerikanskiy schat!' he slurred.

True to his word, Neil turned up the heating and brought the semi-invalid a hot-water bottle to put across his knees.

'I didn't think it got so bad.'

'No, it usually doesn't. I think the lubricants need replacing.' Replacing the PTFE lubricant meant minor out-patient operation once every three years.

Ellie and Moira both had questioning expressions on their faces asking many questions, even though they refrained from actually asking.

They were disappointed. Rather than go into the whole of his American Experience again, Alex dwelt upon why he didn't like Hungarians (or Romanians either - he wasn't biased in his prejudices) which in turn meant going over the consequences of the Last War. Principally this was fallout, carried on winds from the east, still dangerous after all these decades, that insinuated itself into ecosystems and food chains. Every time the "Hot Wind" blew people stayed indoors and sealed their houses, even today when radiation stood at limits proclaimed acceptable by the government. Rumour, folklore and superstition didn't recognise such limits.


End file.
